BiOLOBY  imm 


SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 


SUGGESTION   AND 
MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

AN    OUTLINE    OF    THE  THEORY 
AND  PRACTICE  OF   MIND   CURE 


WILLIAM   BROWN 

M.A.,  M.D.  (OxoN.),  D.Sc!,  M.R.C.P.  (Lond.) 

WILDE    READER   IN    MENTAL   PHILOSOPHY    IN    THE    UNIVERSITY 

OF     OXFORD 

LECTURER  ON  MEDICAL  PSYCHOLOGY,  BETHLEM  ROYAL  HOSPITAL 

LONDON 

LATE  NEUROLOGIST  TO  THE  FOURTH  ARMY,  E.E.F.,  FRANCE 


SECOND  EDITION,   REVISED  AND  ENLARGED 


NEW    ^%SJr    YORK 
GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 

[Printed  in  Great  Britain,] 


PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION 

The  call  for  a  second  edition  has  followed 
so  quickly  upon  the  publication  of  the 
first  that  occasion  has  not  arisen  for  any 
great  change  in  the  scope  or  plan  of  this 
book.  But  I  have  taken  the  opportunity 
to  go  carefully  through  the  text,  removing 
crudities  of  style  in  certain  places,  and 
altering  and  supplementing  the  wording  in 
others  where  perusal  of  reviews  of  the  book 
indicated  its  necessity,  to  obviate  future 
misunderstanding.  An  additional  chapter 
(Chapter  XIII)  has  been  added  in  order  to 
emphasize  the  fact  of  the  incompleteness 
of  present  theories  of  suggestion  and  the 
need  of  further  unbiassed  investigation,  and 

5 

50.H)i3 


6  PREFACE   TO    SECOND    EDITION 

also  to  make  clear  the  need  of  specialized 
training  in  neurology  and  psychiatry  for 
the  practice  of  psycho-therapy. 

William  Brown. 

80  Harley  Street,  London,  W.l, 
Sep.  i^th,  1922. 


PREFACE 

In  setting  out  to  write  this  little  book,  my 
central  object  was  to  give  an  elementary  and 
non-technical  account  of  the  relation  between 
two  distinct  and,  in  the  main,  mutually 
exclusive  forms  of  theory  and  practice  in  the 
field  of  psycho-therapy,  viz.  suggestion  and 
auto-suggestion  on  the  one  hand,  and  mental 
analysis  (including  the  special  Freudian 
system  of  psycho-analysis)  on  the  other.  It 
has  for  some  years  been  my  view  that  these 
two  modes  of  thought  can  be  harmonized,  in 
spite  of  the  vehement  disclaimers  of  extreme 
partisans,  and  that  a  sound  system  of  psycho- 
therapy should  satisfy  the  more  moderate 
claims  of  both.  In  the  following  pages  an 
attempt  is  made  to  justify  this  view  in  an 
elementary  way.  For  a  more  detailed  account 
of  the   analytic   standpoint,    I   would    refer 


PREFACE 


readers  to  my  Psychology  and  Psycho-therapy,'' 
Indeed,  on  that  side,  the  present  book  may 
be  regarded  as  an  introduction  to  the  larger 
work.     But  I  have  taken  the  opportunity  to 
deal  somewhat  more  fully  with  the  problems 
of  suggestion  and  hypnosis  than  was  there 
possible,  and   in  particular  to  examine  the 
view  of  which  M.  Emil  Coue  is  the  most 
prominent  and  enthusiastic  exponent  at  the 
present  day.     Those  who  are  acquainted  with 
the  literature  of  the  subject,  may  not  find 
much  that  is  new  in  M.  Coue's  position.     But 
although   I   have   had    occasion   to  criticize 
the    ''  psychological    background  ''    of    M. 
Coue's  work,  I  would  like  to  record  my  appre- 
ciation of  his  extraordinarily  clear  and  pene- 
trating insight  into  the/^c/j-  of  suggestion, 
his   transparent   sincerity   and   his   untiring 
zeal.     He  is  not  a  doctor,  and  can  therefore 
demonstrate    his    skill    before    the    general 
public  as  no  member  of  the  medical  profession 

1  Published  by  Edward  Arnold  &  Co.,  London.     Second 
Impression,  1922, 


PREFACE 


would  be  permitted  to  do.  Hence  it  is 
only  fair  to  point  out  that  for  many  years 
medical  men  specializing  in  neurology 
and  psycho-therapy  have  employed  similar 
methods  of  treatment  on  suitable  cases  with 
success  in  no  way  inferior  to  that  claimed  for 
his  work.  But  their  more  profound  know- 
ledge of  the  facts  of  physical  and  mental 
disease  has  allowed  them  to  make  progress  in 
psycho-therapy  which  leaves  the  amateur 
far  behind.  Psycho-therapy  is  not  so  simple 
as  those  untrained  in  medicine  and  in  medical 
psychology  sometimes  appear  to  imagine. 
Auto-suggestion,  or  the  patient's  appeal  to 
his  own  subconscious,  must  be  supplemented 
— and  supplemented  so  extensively  as  to  be 
almost  replaced — by  autognosis,or  knowledge 
of  many  of  the  chief  motive-forces  actuating 
that  subconscious.  Suggestion  appeals  to  the 
subconscious  as  to  some  mysterious  deus 
ex  machtna  ;  analysis  proceeds  to  rend  the 
veil  of  the  mystery  and  to  show  of  what  men- 
tal material  that  subconscious  is  made.      If 


10  PREFACE 


this  analysis  is  often  over-subtle  in  the  hands 
of  some  of  its  devotees,  that  is  no  refutation 
of  its  claim  to  be  an  indispensable  factor  in 
diagnosis  and  treatment. 

Certain  chapters  of  the  present  book  were 
delivered  as  extempore  lectures  to  audiences 
in  the  Universities  of  Oxford  and  London, 
and  this  explains,  although  I  fear  that  it 
does  not  altogether  excuse,  the  personal 
element  in  the  style  of  exposition. 

The  concluding  chapters  on  philosophy 
may  be  found  to  be  less  elementary  than 
the  earlier  chapters.  This  is  unavoidable, 
since  philosophy  is  always  and  essentially  a 
difficult  subject. 

My  thanks  are  due  to  the  Editors  of  the 
British  Medical  Journal^  Lancet^  and  Church 
Quarterly  Review  for  permission  to  reprint 
long  extracts  from  three  articles  of  mine 
which  originally  appeared  in  their  pages. 

William   Brown. 

13  Welbeck  Street,  London,  W.i. 
April  igth,  1922. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

Suggestion  and  the  Subconscious 
Good  and  Bad  Auto-suggestion 
Subconscious  Motives   . 
Mental  Dissociation 


15 

17 
18 
20 


CHAPTER   II 


Mental  Analysts     ..... 
Theory  of  Abreaction  or  Psycho-catharsis 
Method  and  Theory  of  Psycho-analysis 
Freud's  Sexual  Theory 
Repression  .... 

Preconscious  and  Unconscious 
The  Censor  .... 


21 

22 
24 

25 
26 
28 
30 


CHAPTER   HI 


Mental  Analysis — continued 

Freud's  Theory  of  Dreams     . 
Alternative  Theory  of  Dreams 
Transference 

Autognosis  .... 
II 


32 
32 
35 
37 
41 


12  CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  IV 

Hysteria  as  a  Dissociation 

C.  G.  Jung's  Word-Association  Test 
Mental  Conflict,  Repression,  and  Dissociation 
Dreams — Somnambulism — A  "  Fugue  "  . 
Value  of  Hypnotism  as  a  Therapeutic  Agent 


PAGE 

43 
44 
49 

62 


CHAPTER  V 

Neurasthenia  and  Compulsion  Neurosis        .,.(>'] 
Dejerine's  Theory  of  Neurasthenia  .  .  .       6S 

Preoccupation  and  Anxiety      .....        70 
Psychasthenia — Obsessions  and  Phobias     ...       75 

CHAPTER  VI 

A  Case   of   Hysterical  Epilepsy  and  Amnesia — with- 

Dreams     .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .81 

CHAPTER  VH 

Hypnosis  and  Suggestion    ......  91 

Hypnosis      ........  91 

Methods  of  Producing  Hypnosis    ....  93 

Susceptibility  to  Hypnosis    .....  97 

Relation  of  Hypnosis  to  Suggestion         .          .          .  loi 

CHAPTER  VHI 

Suggestion  without  Hypnosis    .....     105 
Definition  of  Suggestion  .  .  .  .  .      106 

The  Normal  State  of  Increased  Suggestibility    .  .     109 

The  "  Law  of  Reversed  Effort  "      .  .  .  .111 


/ 


«^ 


CONTENTS 


13 


CHAPTER   IX 

Suggestion,  Auto-suggestion,  and  Mental  Analysis 
Theory  and  Practice  of  M.  Coue    .  .  .  , 

Another  Method  of  Suggestion  Treatment 
Relation  of  Suggestion  to  Mental  Analysis 
Psycho- therapy  and  Religion  .... 

chapter  X 

The     Philosophical     Background — Bergson's     MetA' 
physical  System 
Intuition  and  Intellect 
Time  and  Free  Will 
Elan  Vital     . 
Creative  Evolution 


PAGE 

116 
116 

120 

123 
125 


127 

129 
130 
132 
137 


CHAPTER  XI 

Bergjon's  Theory  of  the  Relation  of  Mind  to  Brain     143 
Perception  ........      145 

Pure  Memory  and  Rote  Memory  .         .         .         .149 

Matter  and  Mind 154 


CHAPTER   XII 

Criticism  of  Bergson         .... 
Perception  and  Thought  '        .  .  . 

The  Meaning  of  "  Image  "... 
Personality  ..... 

^chapter  xiii 

Conclusion^ — The  Practice  of  Psycho-therapy 


.     160 

.  163 

.     i6s 


168 


SUGGESTION   AND    MENTAL 
ANALYSIS 

CHAPTER   I 
SUGGESTION  AND  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS 

One  of  the  most  fundamental  problems 
calling  for  solution  by  Psychology  at  the 
present  day  is  the  nature  of  the  so-called 
subconscious  or  unconscious  mind,  and  its 
exact  relationship  to  consciousness  on  the 
one  hand,  and  to  the  physiological  processes 
of  the  brain  and  other  parts  of  the  body  on 
the  other.  To  attempt  such  a  solution  is 
beyond  the  scope  of  this  small  volume.  All 
that  one  can  do  here  is  to  deal  with  certain 
outstanding  facts  of  normal  and  abnormal 
psychology  in  an  elementary  way  and  to 
show,  by  implication,  that  they  indicate  the 
occurrence  of  processes  going  on  outside 
the  main  consciousness,  but  revealing,  by  the 
results  they  eventually  produce  in  that  main 


i6    suggi:gtion  and  mental  analysis 

personal  consciousness,  that  they  are  them- 
selves mental  and  not  merely  physical  in 
nature. 

A  simple   illustration   is  the   power  that 
many  people  possess  of  waking  up  at  a  definite 
(early)    hour  in  the  morning  by  the    mere 
expedient  of  saying  calmly  and  with  con- 
viction  to  themselves  over-night  that  they 
will  wake  up  at  that  hour.     Their  subcon- 
scious  or   unconscious    mind    registers    this 
suggestion,  retains  it  in  the  absence  of  the 
main  consciousness  during  the  night,  and 
brings  it  into  effect  at  the  right  moment  in 
the  morning.     If  dreaming  occurs,  the  sub- 
conscious plays  a  preponderant  part  in  the 
production  of  the  dream,  and  may  combine 
the  suggestion  with  the  dream  in  an  ingenious 
way.     Thus,    on   one  occasion   it   was    im- 
portant that  I  should  wake  up  at  five  o'clock 
in  the  morning.     After  giving  myself  the 
necessary    suggestion    over-night     I     slept 
soundly,  but  towards  the  morning  I  found 
myself  dreaming  that  I  was  doing  an  after- 
noon (2-5)  examination  paper  in  the  Exa- 
mination Schools  at    Oxford    and    that    an 
examiner  had  called  out, ''  Time,  gentlemen, 


SUGGESTION  AND  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS    17 

please  !  "  I  looked  up  at  the  great  clock 
at  the  end  of  the  room  and  observed  that 
the  hands  pointed  to  4.57.  I  then  awoke, 
to  find  that  my  watch  at  the  side  of  my  bed 
registered  the  same  time. 

The  above  example  illustrates  also  the 
nature  of  auto-suggestion  or  self-suggestion, 
and  shows  that  it  is  best  defined  in  relation 
to  the  subconscious.  The  subconscious  re- 
sponds to  suggestion,  that  is,  to  affirmations 
made  with  belief  or  conviction.  If  emotion 
is  present,  the  success  of  the  suggestion  is 
still  more  fully  ensured — assuming,  of  course, 
that  the  emotion  is  of  the  right  kind.  In 
the  case  of  a  good  or  useful  auto-suggestion 
the  emotion  should  be  that  of  enthusiasm 
and  confident  expectation  (akin  to,  if  not 
identical  with,  faith). 

Bad  auto-suggestions  occur  involuntarily 
with  all  of  us  from  time  to  time,  and  in  many 
cases,  alas  !  are  all  too  frequent.  The  emo- 
tion which  has  special  power  in  reinforcing 
them  is  the  emotion  of  fear.  These  auto- 
suggestions tend  especially  to  exaggerate 
and  to  prolong  ill-health  of  mind  and  body. 
In  a  certain  proportion  of  cases  they  may 


1 8     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

perhaps  be  held  responsible  even  for  the 
initiation  or  production  of  such  ill-health. 
It  is  therefore  clear  that  in  all  cases  of  ill- 
health  the  inculcation  of  habits  of  good 
auto-suggestion  is  most  desirable,  both  to 
neutralize  the  previous  bad  auto-suggestions, 
and  also  to  give  an  additional  uplift  to  the 
vital  powers  of  the  mind  and  body.^  -" 

During  the  War,  those  of  us  who  had  the 
opportunity  of  seeing  nerve  cases  near  the 
firing-line  met  innumerable  examples  of 
functional  nerve  illness  (i.e.  illness  involving 
no  detectable  organic  or  structural  change  in 
the  nervous  system)  initiated  by  bad  auto- 
suggestion. One  of  my  soldier-patients  was 
guarding  an  ammunition-dump,  when  the 
dump  was  blown  up  by  bombs  from  a 
German  aeroplane.  The  man,  in  a  state  of 
intense  fear,  began  to  run  away.  Trembling 
at  the  knees,  he  fell  down,  and  at  this  moment 
the  idea  crossed  his  mind  that  he  was 
paralysed.  He  then  found  that  his  legs 
actually  were  paralysed,  and  as  he  had  been 
hit  by  fragments  of  earth,  he  attributed  his 
condition  to  this.  On  examination  of  him 
at  the  casualty  clearing  station  I  found  no 


SUGGESTION  AND  THE  SUBCONSCIOUS    19 

signs  of  organic  injury  of  his  nervous  sys- 
tem, and  therefore  dragged  him  out  of  bed 
and  urged  him  to  walk,  assuring  him  with 
the  utmost  confidence  that  he  would  certainly 
be  able  to  do  so.  This  suggestion  neutra- 
lized his  original  bad  auto-suggestion,  and 
within  a  few  minutes  he  had  completely 
regained  the  power  over  his  legs.  Even  in 
such  a  simple  case  as  this,  however,  there 
was  an  additional  mental  factor,  viz.  the 
wish  to  become  a  casualty  and  so  get  away 
from  the  danger  area.  In  other  cases  this 
wish  often  played  a  more  prominent  part 
in  the  production  of  symptoms,  although  in 
a  subconscious  form,  i.e.  not  clearly  present 
in  the  patient's  main  consciousness.  It 
played  a  still  more  prominent  part  in  fixing 
the  symptoms  if  the  soldier  reached  the  Base 
or  England  untreated. 

The  various  mental  factors  at  work  in 
producing  shell-shock  were  especially  easy 
to  disentangle  in  early  cases,  before  the  lapse 
of  time  had  consolidated  the  illness  and 
complicated  it  with  the  effects  of  meditation, 
false  theorizing,  and  the  subconscious  work- 
ing   of   other    motives    and    desires    in    the 


20     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

patient's  mind.  In  addition  to  the  two 
above  mentioned,  there  were  two  other 
factors  that  stood  out  with  special  clearness 
in  shell-shock  of  hysterical  type.  These 
were:  (i)  mental  dissociation  of  a  crude 
type,  shown  by  a  loss  of  memory  (or  amnesia, 
as  it  is  technically  called)  for  the  events  of 
the  frightening  experience  ;  and  (2)  the 
*'  bottling-up  "  of  the  emotion  of  fear.  The 
two  factors  are  essentially  related  to  one 
another,  and  they  are  overcome  by  the  same 
method,  viz.  by  recalling  the  lost  memory, 
under  light  hypnosis,  with  as  great  a  vivid- 
ness as  possible,  so  that  the  bottled-up  fear 
is  again  released.^  This  latter  process  is 
known  as  "  abreaction  "  or  psycho-catharsis, 
and  has  a  definitely  curative  effect. 

Thus  the  simplest  cases  of  functional  nerve 
illness  take  us  beyond  mere  suggestion  and 
auto-suggestion,  and  lead  us  inevitably  to 
an  analysis  of  the  subconscious,  and  a 
closer  investigation  of  its  constituent  ele- 
ments. 

1  For  a  full  explanation  of  these  factors,  in  relation  to  the 
best  illustration  of  their  working  that  has  come  to  my  notice, 
see  my  Psychology  and  Psycho-thera-py,  2nd  impression,  Edward 
Arnold  &  Co.,  1922,  pp.  21-23  ;   the  case  of  the  Ypres  gunner. 


CHAPTER  II 

MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

I  HAVE  recently  had  the  scientific  good 
fortune  to  meet  with  a  case  of  hysterical 
amnesia  with  '*  bottled-up  "  emotion  and 
physical  symptoms,  closely  similar  to  the 
case  of  the  Ypres  gunner  referred  to  in  the 
footnote  at  the  end  of  the  previous  chapter 
and  recorded  in  detail  in  my  Psychology 
and    Psycho-therapy, 

This  second  case  was  a  motor  driver  who 
suffered  from  a  tremor  of  the  right  hand, 
which  had  set  in  shortly  after  a  motor 
accident.  He  had  just  succeeded  in  avoid- 
ing collision  with  another  car,  but  had  run 
into  a  ditch  in  consequence,  and  his  car  had 
overturned.  He  was  driving  with  his  right 
hand  at  the  time.  His  memory  for  the 
accident  was  vague  and  disjointed.  Under 
light  hypnosis  (see  Chapters  IV  and  VI) 
I  made  him  live  through  the  whole  experi- 

21 


22      SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

ence  again  with  emotional  vividness,  so 
that  all  the  gaps  in  his  memory  were  filled  in. 
As  he  went  through  this  process  of  abreac- 
tion  his  hand  trembled  still  more  and  then 
became  quite  steady.  It  remained  steady 
after  he  had  been  wakened  from  the  hypnotic 
sleep. 

This  cure  may  be  explained  as  follows  : 
A  patient  with  a  "  lost  ''  painful  memory 
is  in  such  a  condition  that  he  needs  to  use 
a  certain  amount  of  mental  energy  or  nerve 
energy  in  holding  back  this  distressing 
experience  from  the  notice  of  the  main 
personality.  By  forcing  the  memory  up 
into  his  main  consciousness  one  breaks 
through  that  cordon  of  repressing  energy,  so 
that  the  repressing  energy  is  no  longer 
needed  to  hold  the  memory  down,  and  yet  it 
is  not  taken  away  from  the  patient  and  he 
can  use  it  for  other  purposes.  He  has  to 
face  the  unpleasant  memory  fairly  and 
squarely,  and  it  thus  becomes  harmless  once 
more.  The  circumstances  of  his  accident 
made  this  impossible  for  my  patient  at  the 
time,  hence  the  memory  was  able  to  persist 
in  a  dissociated  state  in  the  subconscious,  and 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  23 

reveal  itself  through  the  persistent  tremor 
of  the  right  hand. 

The  metaphor  I  like  to  use  Is  that  of  a 
business  man  who  is  being  blackmailed. 
He  may  be  frightened  at  first,  and  be  ready 
to  pay  the  blackmailer  his  fee,  perhaps  year 
after  year,  to  the  detriment  of  his  business. 
If,  however,  he  meets  a  sensible  friend  who 
urges  him  to  do  the  right  thing,  to  face  the 
blackmailer,  in  open  court  if  necessary,  and 
tell  him  to  do  his  worst,  then  matters  are 
eventually  readjusted,  and  he  can  now  spend 
this  money  on  his  business  again. 

Crude  dissociation  such  as  I  have  described 
occurs  as  the  main  or  central  symptom  in 
hysteria  only.  An  additional  example  is 
described  in  full  detail  in  Chapter  IV.  But, 
as  we  shall  see  in  Chapter  V,  there  are  other 
forms  of  functional  nerve  disease — or  psycho- 
neuroses,  as  they  are  otherwise  called — in 
which  this  crude  form  of  dissociation  does 
not  occur,  but  in  which  the  same  general 
factors  of  mental  conflict  and  repression,  in 
addition  to  bad  auto-suggestion,  are  recog- 
nizable. 

It  is  to  Breuer  and  Freud  that  the  credit  is 


24     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

due  of  being  the  first  to  suggest,  not  the 
above-mentioned  view  of  a  repressing  energy, 
but  the  view  that  dissociation  is  the  result  of 
mental  conflict  and  subsequent  repression. 
They  found  that  if  the  lost  memories  were 
induced  to  come  up  with  emotional  vividness 
by  hypnotism  or  by  long  talks,  and  talked 
out  (abreaction),  the  patient  felt  better. 
But  the  now  famous  doctrine  of  psycho- 
analysis was  a  later  development,  for  which 
Freud  alone  is  responsible. 

Psycho-analysis 

The  word  Psycho-analysis  connotes  both 
a  method  and  a  theory.  As  a  method  it  is 
a  method  of  free  association,  of  bringing 
back  early  memories,  early  phantasies,  and 
early  mental  tendencies  by  getting  the  patient 
to  fall  into  a  state  of  reverie  with  the  critical 
sense  in  abeyance  and  to  allow  ideas  to  come 
up  from  the  subconscious.  It  was  found  by 
Freud  that  these  ideas,  when  they  came  up, 
were  often  emotionally  tinged.  It  was  found 
that  memories  of  early  childhood  eventually 
appeared,  and  especially  that  memories  in 
relation  to  what  Freud  calls  infantile  sexu- 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  25 

ality  appeared  to  have  more  and  more 
prominent  value  and  importance  in  relation 
to  the  symptoms  and  in  clearing  up  the 
symptoms. 

Thus,  in  addition  to  the  method  of  psycho- 
analysis there  has  arisen  the  theory  of  psycho- 
analysis, according  to  which  the  psycho- 
neuroses  are  due  to  disturbance  of  sex-develop- 
ment, the  theory  that  sex  life  on  its  psychical, 
if  not  on  its  physical,  side  begins  early  in  life, 
that  it  is  not  single  but  multiple,  that  there  are 
a  number  of  partial  processes  or  tendencies 
(sadism,  masochism,  exhibitionism,  sexual 
curiosity,  etc.),  and  these  tendencies  of 
early  life  can  undergo  normal  development, 
in  which  they  are  partially  transformed, 
parts  being  outgrown,  parts  converging  to 
form  the  unitary  sexual  instinct  of  adult  life, 
and  the  remainder  being  *'  sublimated  " 
into  higher  forms  of  social  and  intellectual 
activity.  If  any  partial  process  persists 
untransformed,  it  constitutes  a  perversion. 
If  it  persists  but  undergoes  repression,  the 
result  in  consciousness  is  the  symptoms  of  a 
psycho-neurosis. 

The  modern  form  of  Freud's  sexual  theory 


26     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

contains  many  additions  to  and  complica- 
tions of  the  above  bare  outline,  especially 
as  regards  the  phenomena  of  narcissism,  or 
self-love,  and  his  formulation  of  the  whole 
doctrine  in  terms  of  mental  energy  under  the 
name  ''  libido  theory  "  ;  but  space  does  not 
admit  of  more  detailed  explanation  here. 

Repression 

The  general  conception  of  repression  may 
be  explained  in  an  elementary  way  as  follows  : 
If  one  is  faced  with  a  temptation  that  is  out 
of  harmony  with  one's  main  personality, 
there  are  three  general  ways  of  dealing  with 
it.  One  may  give  way  to  it — lower  one's 
ideals  to  make  way  for  it  and  consciously 
surrender  oneself  to  it.  The  result  is  nothing 
harmful  from  the  narrowly  medical  point  of 
view,  however  harmful  from  the  moral  point 
of  view,  in  regard  to  the  health  of  the  soul. 
Another  way  of  dealing  with  it  is  to  face  it, 
to  consider  it  carefully  in  relation  to  one's 
ideals,  one's  social  and  domestic  duties  and 
one's  general  purposes,  and  then  to  reject  it 
by  reason.     Here,  again,  the  result  is  a  nor- 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  27 

mal  solution  of  the  conflict,  free  from  morbid 
symptoms,  and  the  personality  emerges  from 
the  conflict  with  added  power  of  will  and 
undiminished  coherence.  But  there  is  a 
third  way,  the  way  of  compromise  and 
cowardice.  One  may  be  astonished  to  find 
that  one  is  capable  of  such  a  craving  and 
turn  one's  mind  away  in  horror.  Like  the 
ostrich,  one  buries  one's  head  in  the  sand  and 
hopes  half-heartedly  that  the  enemy  will 
pass  one  by.  One  distracts  one's  mind  and 
looks  elsewhere,  but  not  whole-heartedly. 
The  result  is  that  dissociation  occurs.  The 
experiences  tend  to  fall  away  from  the 
general  sway  of  the  conscious  mind,  they 
are  repressed  and  pass  into  the  subconscious. 
They  retain  their  original  energy,  and  from 
their  new  vantage  ground  produce  stress  and 
strain  in  the  conscious  mind  which  the  latter 
does  not  understand,  and  ultimately  produce 
an  outbreak  of  physical  symptoms  or  mental 
symptoms,  or  both.  The  right  way  to  deal 
with  a  repression  of  this  sort  is  to  recall  the 
memories  to  the  patient's  mind,  to  call  the 
craving  up  again,  and  let  the  patient  face  it 
and  deal  with  it  as  a  normal  person  would  do, 


28     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

intellectualize  it  and  destroy  it,  or  sublimate 
it,  i.e.  direct  it  in  modified  form  to  useful 
social  activities. 

Preconscious  and  Unconscious 

Freud's  own  doctrine  of  repression  is  more 
complex  and  technical  than  this,  and  is 
closely  bound  up  with  his  general  theory  of 
the  unconscious.  Freud  avoids  the  term 
subconscious,  preferring  to  call  the  out-of- 
consciousness  part  of  the  mind  the  uncon- 
scious. But  within  this  general  unconscious 
he  distinguishes  two  forms,  viz.  the  pre- 
conscious and  the  unconscious  proper.  The 
distinction  is,  put  briefly  and  not  quite 
accurately,  one  between  unrepressed  and 
repressed  memories  and  mental  activities, 
and  does  not  exist  in  the  early  years  of  child- 
hood, but  gradually  takes  shape  as  the  child 
passes  through  the  various  stages  of  conven- 
tional, social,  and  ethical  education.  This 
course  of  education,  together  with  the  natural 
development  of  the  mental  life,  involves 
the  repeated  process  of  repression.  Primi- 
tive tendencies  are  held  in  check  and  driven 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  ±9 

out  of  consciousness  by  the  activity  of  the 
ethical  ideas  of  later  development. 

The  distinction  is  also  one  between  two 
different  forms  of  mental  activity,  a  primary 
process  and  a  secondary  process,  as  Freud 
calls  them.  The  primary  process  is  charac- 
teristic of  the  mental  activity  of  early  child- 
hood. The  young  child  turns  away  from 
pain  instead  of  facing  it,  and  tends  to  cling 
to  the  memories  of  earlier  pleasurable  experi- 
ences, and  to  seek  the  satisfaction  of  its 
clamouring  desires  or  wishes  in  the  form  of 
intensified  memories  of  previous  satisfactions. 
This  is  what  Freud  means  when  he  says 
that  the  unconscious  can  do  nothing  but 
wish. 

So  soon  as  the  power  arises  of  freeing  one- 
self from  the  exclusive  influence  of  the 
memories  of  previous  satisfactions,  and  of 
turning  to  seek  means  of  bringing  about  a 
new  and  objectively-satisfying  experience 
by  changes  in  the  external  world,  the 
secondary  process  has  set  in.  The  secondary 
process,  which  is  the  characteristic  form  of 
activity  of  the  preconscious,  can  face  pain- 
ful experiences  and  memories,  and  make  use 


30     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

of  them  in  bringing  about  desirable  changes 
in  the  outer  v/orld  instead  of  merely  turning 
away  from  them.  It  is  this  ''  turning 
away  "  in  early  life  which  is  the  beginning 
of  repression  and  the  pre-condition  of  all 
later  repressions.  The  abandoned  memories 
and  desires  in  the  unconscious  persist  in  all 
their  pristine  vigour,  and  serve  as  a  nucleus 
of  attraction  for  later  suppressed  ^  tenden- 
cies of  the  preconscious  that  happen  to  be  at 
all  analogous  to  themselves.  These  are  thus 
drawn  into  the  unconscious  and  fall  under  the 
sway  of  the  primary  process. 

The  Censor 

The  repressing  force  of  the  secondary 
process  is  known  metaphorically  as  the 
endopsychic  censor^  and  constitutes  a  resist- 
ance placed  "  like  a  screen  "  between  the 
unconscious  and  the  preconscious.  The  re- 
pressed tendencies  and  ideas  of  the  uncon- 
scious can  only  reach  consciousness  after 
first  overcoming  this  resistance,  undergoing 

^  Note  that  suppression  (U titer driickung)  in  Freud's    theory 
is  not  the  same  as  repression  [Verdrdngung). 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  31 

certain  changes  in  the  process  (distortion), 
whereas  the  tendencies  and  memories  of  the 
preconscious  can  pass  unchanged  into  con- 
sciousness so  soon  as  an  appropriate  distri- 
bution of  the  mental  function  known  as 
attention  is  secured. 


CHAPTER   III 

MENTAL   ANALYSIS— continued 

Dreams 

There  is  thus  a  species  of  dissociation 
present  even  in  the  normal  mind,  and 
mental  disease,  instead  of  producing  this 
dissociation,  merely  emphasizes  it  in  certain 
cases  by  disturbing  the  equilibrium  of 
psychic  forces  interacting  between  the  two  ^ 
systems  of  the  unconscious  and  the  pre-  j 
conscious.  The  proof  of  this  is  to  be  found 
in  the  phenomenon  of  dreamhig^  which  is 
a  normal  function  of  the  mind.  Freud 
holds  that  in  dreams  the  wishes  of  the 
unconscious  succeed  in  reaching  conscious- 
ness in  a  disguised  or  distorted  form  owing 
to  the  diminished  efficiency  of  the  censor 
during  sleep.  The  ''manifest  dream  content," 
as  it  is  called,  consists  of  a  patchwork  of 
memories,  some  of  them  in  every  case 
coming    from    the    previous    day,    showing 

32 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  33 

peculiarities  known  as  condensation,  dis- 
placement, dramatization,  and  secondary- 
elaboration,  the  exact  nature  of  which  we 
cannot  go  into  here.^  The  meaning  of  the 
dream,  or  the  system  of  *'  latent  dream 
thoughts,''  is  very  different  from  this,  and 
is,  in  Freud's  view,  invariably  the  fulfilment 
of  a  repressed  wish  from  the  unconscious. 
The  "  symbolism  "  so  prevalent  in  dreams 
originates  from  the  latent  content,  and  is 
not  a  product  of  dream-activity.  The 
method  of  psycho-analysis  is  employed  in  the 
task  of  discovering  the  latent  dream  thoughts. 
The  dreamer  directs  his  attention  to  different 
parts  of  the  manifest  content,  in  succession, 
and  follows  the  train  of  associated  ideas  that 
arise  in  his  mind  from  each,  carefully  avoid- 
ing any  criticism  of  them,  but  recording 
them  faithfully  as  they  appear  in  conscious- 
ness, however  objectionable  or  painful  some 
of  them  may  be.  He  will  then  find  that 
all  these  trains  of  '*  free  "  associations  con- 
verge to  one  system  of  ideas  which  originates 

1  See  Psychology  and  Psycho-therafy,  pp.  48,  49,  59,  60,  for  an 
explanation  of  these  characteristics,  the  first  three  of  which  are 
the  result  of  what  Freud  calls  "  dream-work." 

3 


34     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS  i 

from  the  unconscious  and  consists  of  repressed 
wishes.     In  every  dream  there  is  also  fulfilled 
the    wish    of    the    preconscious    to    sleep, 
so  that  every  dream  is  a  compromise  between 
the  wish  of  the  preconscious  to  sleep,  and  one 
or    more    wishes    emanating    from    the    un- 
conscious.    Both  wishes  are  fulfilled  by  the 
dream.     Now,  in  Freud's  theory,  the  symp- 
toms of  hysteria  are  analogous  to  the  dreams 
of  normal  persons.     They,  too,  are  the  dis- 
guised fulfilment  of  repressed  wishes  in  the 
unconscious,   but   so   chosen   that   they   also 
fulfil  a  counter-wish  from  the  preconscious,    j 
generally  of  the  nature  of  a  self-punishment. 
By    means  of   psycho-analysis  these   wishes    i 
may   be   brought  to  consciousness   in   their 
true  form.     Success  in  this  means  the  cure 
of  the  patient,  since  he  is  now  able  to  deal   , 
with  these  repressed  tendencies  more  ration-   \ 
ally,  and  either  sublimate  them,  i.e.  direct    < 
them  to  higher  and  more  social  ends,  or  give 
them  moderate  satisfaction.     His  personality 
is  stronger  and  more  completely  developed 
now  than  it  was  when  the  repressions  first   i 
took  place,  and  is  therefore  better  able  to    , 
deal  with  them.  I 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  35 

Alternative  Theory  of  Dreams 

Freud's  theory  that  every  dream  is  the 
disguised  fulfilment  of  a  repressed  wish  is 
difficult  to  reconcile  with  the  "battle  dreams'' 
that  were  reported  by  our  patientsin  suchpro- 
fusion  during  the  War.  For  these  dreams  are 
not  quite  analogous  to  the  '*  anxiety  dreams  " 
of  peace-time,  and  even  Freud's  explanation 
of  the  latter  in  terms  of  his  theory,  viz. 
that  in  them  the  censor  has  been  overpowered 
by  forbidden  sexual  wishes  welling  up 
from  the  unconscious,  is  unconvincing. 

In  my  own  view,  neither  repression  in 
the  Freudian  sense  nor  the  action  of  un- 
conscious wishes  is  essential  to  the  pro- 
duction of  a  dream.  Other  conations,  or 
mental  strivings,  besides  wishes  may  act  as 
essential  factors — conations,  too,  which  as 
such  are  not  in  a  state  of  repression.  The 
function  of  a  dream  is  to  guard  sleep.  Sleep 
is  an  instinct,  like  pugnacity,  flight,  curiosity, 
self-assertion,  etc.,  which  has  survival  value 
and  has  been  developed  in  the  course  of 
evolution.  At  night,  this  instinct  of  sleep 
comes  into  play,  but  it  finds  itself  in  conflict 


36     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 


V 


with   other    instinctive   tendencies,    as   well 
as  with  the  assaults  of  external  impressions 
through     the     senses.       Desires,     cravings, 
anxieties,    the    memories    of    earlier    days, 
linked  up  with  and  sustained  by  the  more 
elemental  strivings    of    the    organism,  well 
up  and  struggle  towards  consciousness,  while 
the  main  personality  is  in  abeyance.     If  they 
reach  clear  consciousness,  sleep  is  at  an  end, 
but  the  dream,  which  is  a  sort  of  intermediary 
form  of  consciousness,  intervenes  and  makes 
the  impulses  innocuous  so  that  sleep  persists. 
External    impressions    are    woven    into    the 
texture  of  the  dream  in  modified  form  and 
apperceived  after  the  manner  of  an  illusion, 
while  the  inner  impulses  undergo  varying 
degrees    of    distortion.     Such    a    theory    as 
this  is  sufficiently  general  to  cover  all  types 
of  dreams.     As   regards   the    interpretation 
of  dreams,  I  would  say  that  a  dream  is  like    1 
smoke  showing  where  the  fire  is,    but  I  feel    I 
doubtful  of  the  validity  of  the  excessively    ii 
detailed   interpretations  that  the   Freudians    t 
obtain  from  dreams.     As  regards  symbolism. 
in    dreams,  I    would    agree    that    primitive 
tendencies    in  the   unconscious  bring  their 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  37 

symbols  with  them — symbols  that  have  their 
counterpart  in  the  pictorial  imagery  of  myths 
and  legends. 

Transference 

A  factor  in  the  method  of  psycho-analysis, 
hitherto  unmentioned,  but  to  which  Freud 
attaches  great  importance  in  his  more  recent 
writings,  is  that  of  ''  transference."  Gradu- 
ally in  the  course  of  analysis  the  patient 
becomes  more  and  more  linked  up  with  the 
doctor,  more  and  more  impressed  with  his 
personality.  An  emotional  rapport  is  set 
up,  akin  to  love,  and  this  seems  to  be  an 
essential  factor  in  cure.  Freud  sums  up 
the  situation  in  the  following  words  :  *'  If 
the  patient  has  to  fight  out  the  normal  conflict 
with  the  resistances  which  we  have  dis- 
covered in  him  in  the  course  of  the  analysis, 
he  is  in  need  of  a  powerful  motive  force 
to  influence  the  decision  in  the  sense,  desired 
by  us,  leading  to  recovery.  Otherwise  it 
could  happen  that  he  might  decide  for  a 
repetition  of  the  previous  result,  and  let  that 
which  has  been  raised  into  consciousness 
slip   back   into   a  state  of  repression.     The 


38     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

deciding  factor  in  this  fight  is,  then,  not  his 
intellectual  insight — which  is  neither  strong 
enough  nor  free  enough  for  such  a  function — 
but  solely  his  relation  to  the  physician.  So 
far  as  his  transference  is  of  a  positive  nature, 
it  clothes  the  physician  with  authority,  and 
transforms  itself  into  faith  in  his  statements 
and  views.  Without  such  transference,  or 
if  the  transference  is  negative,  he  would  not 
for  a  moment  let  the  physician  and  his  argu- 
ments come  to  a  hearing."  ^  Freud  asserts  that 
in  transference  earlier  emotional  tendencies, 
the  feelings  experienced  by  the  patient  in 
early  years  towards  his  parents  and  other 
persons  in  his  immediate  neighbourhood, 
are  unconsciously  transferred  to  the  doctor. 
If  the  feeling  is  one  of  affection  or  liking  the 
transference  is  positive,  if  one  of  dislike  or 
hate  the  transference  is  negative.  We  here 
have  a  reference  to  the  famous  *'  CEdipus 
complex "  ^  of    Freudian    theory.     Just    as 

1  S.  Freud  :  Vorlesungen  xur  Einfuhrung  in  die  Psychoanalyse, 
1918,  p.  522.  See  also  my  Psychology  and  Psycho-therapy, 
pp.   108-11. 

2  "  Complex  "  is  a  term,  first  introduced  by  C.  G.  Jung,  to 
denote  a  system  of  repressed  and  emotionally  tinged  ideas 
which,  under  cover  of  the  unconscious,  exerts  a  more  or  less 
baneful  influence  on  the  working  of  the  conscious  mind. 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  39 

CEdipus,  in  Sophocles'  tragedy,  unwittingly 
killed  his  own  father  and  married  his  own 
mother,  so  the  very  young  child  is  considered 
to  feel  intense  love  for  the  parent  of  the 
opposite  sex,  and  hatred  and  jealousy  to- 
wards the  parent  of  the  same  sex.  These 
feelings  undergo  repression  during  subse- 
quent mental  development,  but  persist  in  the 
unconscious  and  furnish  the  material  for 
transference  in  the  course  of  psycho-analysis, 
and  also  in  other  relations  in  life. 

I  find  it  difficult  to  accept  this  doctrine 
of  the  (Edipus  complex  in  its  crude  form,  nor 
can  I  accept  Freud's  general  theory  of  infan- 
tile sexuality  as  of  universal  validity.  Iso- 
lated cases,  of  extreme  type,  may  at  first 
sight  seem  to  lend  colour  to  these  views,  but 
closer  scrutiny  of  them  and  the  extension 
of  analysis  over  a  larger  series  of  cases  raise 
grave  doubts  as  to  the  universal  truth  of 
the  theories.  Without  denying  that  past 
likes  and  dislikes  may  and  do  have  influence 
over  one's  present  feelings  towards  the  people 
of  one's  environment  through  the  factor  of 
similarity,  one  does  not  find  sufficiently 
convincing    evidence    that    this    emotional 


40     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

rapport  between  doctor  and  patient  is  a  re- 
edition  of  early  experience  unconscious  of 
its  origin.  The  Freudian  view  is  that 
transference  can  be  resolved  by  further 
analysis,  whereby  its  origin  in  the  CEdipus 
complex  becomes  manifest  to  the  patient 
himself.  Here,  again,  I  can  only  say  that 
my  own  experience  with  patients  does  not 
bear  this  out. 

Freud  explains  suggestion  in  terms  of 
transference,  and  holds  that  when  symptoms 
are  removed  by  suggestion  treatment,  no 
real  cure  has  been  produced,  but  that  the 
symptoms  have  merely  been  replaced  by 
another  symptom,  viz.  psycho-sexual  depen- 
dence of  the  patient  upon  the  physician. 
The  facts  of  auto-suggestion  alone  are  suffi- 
cient to  refute  this  theory.  The  working 
of  suggestion  in  very  early  life,  before  the 
factor  of  transference  could  have  any  validity, 
likewise  refutes  it. 

Whereas  Freud  explains  suggestion  in 
terms  of  transference,  I  would  explain  trans- 
ference (partly  at  least)  in  terms  of  sugges- 
tion, and  hold  that  suggestion  is  the  wider 
of  the  tw^o  terms.     I  most  certainly  do  not 


MENTAL  ANALYSIS  41 

deny  the  fact  which  Freud  calls  by  the  name 
of  transference. 

AUTOGNOSIS 

In  the  course  of  mental  analysis,  the  patient 
obtains  a  more  and  more  objective  view  of  the 
past  course  of  his  mental  life.  He  learns  to 
understand  himself  better.  He  gets  to  know 
more  fully  his  ''  dubious  desires,"  what  he 
really  w^ants  of  life.  He  understands  more 
clearly  in  what  respects  he  has  failed  in  the 
past  to  adjust  himself  adequately  to  the  de- 
mands of  life  and  to  the  peculiarities  of  his 
own  nature.  He  becomes  more  fully  aware 
of  the  relation  between  his  present  mental 
condition  and  his  past  history  on  the  one 
hand,  and  his  ambitions,  hopes  and  fears  for 
the  future  on  the  other.  This  process  of 
intellectualization  of  the  mind,  whereby  the 
patient  gains  an  unbiassed  view  of  his  own 
life  and  an  ever-deepening  insight  into  its 
true  nature,  is  one  of  the  most  important 
factors  of  cure  in  the  course  of  mental  analysis, 
for  which  I  have  suggested  the  term  "  auto- 
gnosis."  It  is  knowledge  that  sets  one  free. 
Freedom  of  the  will  has  no  meaning  apart 


42     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

from  intellect,  although,  of  course,  it  is  a 
matter  of  other  mental  powers  besides  intellect. 
(Not  that  one  can  with  complete  correctness 
speak  of  mental  powers  being  "  beside  "  one 
another  at  all.  But  in  an  elementary  summary 
it  is  impossible  to  avoid  metaphor  entirely. 
Nevertheless  it  is  essential  to  realize  that  it 
is  metaphor.) 

We  may  now  pass  to  a  more  detailed 
description  of  cases,  in  which  the  principles 
of  suggestion  and  mental  analysis  are  illus- 
trated. 


CHAPTER   IV 
HYSTERIA  AS   A  DISSOCIATION 

The  following  case  illustrates  the  conception 
of  hysteria  as  a  dissociation,  involving  mental 
conflict  and  repression,  in  a  specially  clear 
way,  and  seems  worth  reporting  in  some 
detail. 

A  soldier,  aged  47,  unmarried,  had  had 
three  hysterical  attacks  in  his  life.  The  first 
attack  occurred  at  the  age  of  26,  the  second 
at  the  age  of  36,  and  the  third  attack  a 
month  or  two  before  I  saw  him.  When  he 
came  to  me  he  was  suffering  from  extreme 
loss  of  memory,  and  could  remember  very 
little  of  what  had  happened  during  the  War. 
He  was  suffering  also  from  weakness  of  the 
legs,  a  tendency  to  anesthesia,  especially  in 
the  right  leg,  and  a  very  definite  tendency 
towards  dissociation — towards  dreamy  states, 
states  of  mental  distraction,  when  he  was 
unable  to  concentrate  on  what  was  before  him. 

43 


44     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 


I  will  consider  the  case  in  the  order  of  my 
gradual  insight  into  his  mental  condition. 
All  that  was  emphasized  in  the  medical  case- 
sheet  was  that  he  had  recently  had  an  hysterical 
attack,  in  which  he  lost  consciousness  for  some 
time,  and  had  since  suffered  from  paralysis 
of  the  right  side,  with  anaesthesia  of  the  right 
leg  below  the  knee.  In  talking  to  him  I  did 
not  at  first  get  very  much  help.  He  did 
not  tell  me  very  much  about  himself.  And 
so  I  proceeded  to  use  the  method  of  word 
association  which  Jung  was  the  first  to 
introduce  into  psychology — that  is,  I  drew 
up  a  list  of  words  and  called  them  out  one 
after  another  to  my  patient.  (One  calls  out 
the  word  and  starts  a  stop-watch  going,  after 
first  instructing  the  patient  to  reply  with  the 
first  word  which  comes  into  his  mind.  If 
one  calls  out  the  word  "  house,"  he  may 
reply  with  the  word  "  garden,"     Thus  : 

Stimulus  T^        .  Association 

„7     J  Reaction.  rj.. 

Word.  lime. 

House  Garden  r8'' 

Grass  Green  1*2'' 

So  one  goes  on,  calling  out  one  word  after 
another,     interspersing    words    which     one 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  45 

thinks  may  bear  upon  the  earlier  associations 
of  the  patient,  and  may  be  connected  with 
his  dissociation.  A  prolonged  association 
time  is  one  indication,  among  others,  of 
the  existence  of  a  '*  complex."  A  normal 
association  time  is  i  to  3  seconds.) 

I  called  out  the  word  "  death,"  and  the 
subject  remained  absolutely  silent  for  twenty 
seconds,  then  gave  the  word  "  geranium." 
He  smiled  as  he  gave  the  word,  and  said  it 
seemed  a  curious  word  to  give — he  did  not 
know  why  he  gave  it,  but  it  was  the  first 
word  that  came  into  his  mind.  This  was 
all  that  I  got  of  value  from  the  association 
test  in  my  case. 

I  questioned  the  man  further,  and  got  a 
certain  amount  of  information  from  him. 
He  told  me  that  the  first  hysterical  attack  he 
had  was  at  the  age  of  26,  as  I  said  before. 
He  had  just  recovered  from  an  attack  of 
influenza,  and  had  walked  out  to  visit  a 
great  friend  of  his.  By  some  mistake  he  was 
shown  by  his  friend's  sister  into  a  room  where 
the  man  lay  dead  in  his  coffin.  His  friend, 
whom  we  will  call  J.,  was  dead — had  died 
suddenly  after  an  accident   in  the  football 


46     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

field.  My  patient  had  not  heard  of  the 
death,  because  of  his  own  illness.  This 
was  about  eight  o'clock  at  night.  My 
patient  staggered  out  of  the  house,  noticing, 
however,  to  his  surprise,  that  he  felt  very 
little.  He  felt  shaken,  but  very  cool.  He 
was  surprised  and  annoyed  that  he  felt  no 
grief.  Then  he  lost  consciousness,  and 
evidently  wandered  about  London  until  he 
came  to  himself,  about  four  o'clock  next 
morning,  in  a  part  of  London  which  he  did 
not  recognize.  He  tried  to  find  out  where  he 
was.  He  met  a  policeman,  who,  of  course, 
imagined  that  he  had  been  drinking.  He 
could  not  remember  his  name  or  address,  or 
anything  about  himself,  but  they  searched 
his  pockets  and  found  out  where  he  lived, 
and  then  took  him  to  a  hospital.  He  lay 
there  for  several  days,  suffering  from  pain 
down  the  right  side  of  the  head,  over  the 
right  eye,  pins-and-needles  down  the  right 
side  of  the  body,  weakness  of  the  right  leg, 
giddiness  and  nausea.  At  first  he  had  very 
vivid  dreams  which  he  could  not  remember. 
Later  on  he  began  to  get  better,  however, 
was  allowed  up,  and  finally  left  the  hospital. 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  47 

That  was  at  the  age  of  26 — that  is,  twenty 
years  before  I  saw  him. 

Ten  years  later  he  happened  to  be  walking 
from  Boscombe  to  Bournemouth  along  the 
parade,  when  he  suddenly  felt  giddy  again, 
and  had  to  stagger  to  the  side  of  the  esplanade 
and  support  himself  against  the  wall.  He 
nearly  lost  consciousness,  but  pulled  himself 
together,  got  home,  and  was  seen  by  a 
doctor.  He  was  again  suffering  from  the 
same  pains  and  the  same  tendency  tow^ards 
a  dreamy  state  of  consciousness.  He  went 
into  a  hospital  on  the  doctor's  advice.  (This 
time,  too,  he  had  just  recovered  from  an 
attack  of  influenza.)  He  recovered  after 
he  had   been   in  hospital  some  weeks. 

His  third  attack  occurred  in  October 
19 1 7.  He  had  just  had  a  bout  of  sciatica, 
and  was  thoroughly  tired  out  by  drill  and 
all  the  routine  of  a  soldier's  life.  This  attack 
resembled  the  two  previous  ones,  with  similar 
pains  in  the  head  and  body.  He  was  taken 
to  a  military  hospital  and  afterwards  trans- 
ferred to  another,  where  they  treated  him 
in  a  masterly  way  with  electricity  and  mas- 
sage and  got  him  on  his  feet  again,  so  that 


48     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

when  he  came  to  me  he  had  roughly  re- 
covered from  most  of  his  symptoms,  but  had 
this  extensive  loss  of  memory.  He  could 
remember  very  little  that  had  happened 
during  the  War. 

As  I  said,  the  first  thing  I  discovered 
about  him  was  that  the  word  ''  death  "  gave 
a  long  reaction  time,  and  produced  as  a  re- 
action the  curious  word  ''  geranium,"  which 
he  himself  could  not  explain.  I  then  pro- 
ceeded to  hypnotize  him,  which  was  very 
easy.  I  asked  him  to  lie  on  a  couch,  with 
muscles  relaxed,  to  fixate  a  bright  light  for 
a  couple  of  seconds,  and  then  to  close  his 
eyes  and  think  only  of  sleep.  A  minute 
later  I  suggested  to  himi  that  he  would  now 
remember  events  of  his  past  life  connected 
with  his  symptoms.  He  at  once  passed  into 
a  very  emotional  state,  and  began  to  remem- 
ber things  which  he  had  not  been  thinking 
about  for  some  years.  ''  Geranium  "  he 
then  knew  to  correspond  to  the  nickname  of 
a  girl  he  had  known  over  twenty  years 
before.  She  had  been  called  the  *'  Geranium 
Girl  ''  after  an  advertisement  for  cigarettes. 
She  was  like  the  girl  in  the  picture  which 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  49 

appeared  as  part  of  the  advertisement.     He 
proceeded  to  tell  me  a  rather  dramatic  story 
of  his  early  life.     He  had  been  extremely 
fond  of  his  friend  who  had   died,  whom  I 
have  called  J.     They  had  been  close  friends 
for  years,  when  J.  became  engaged   to  this 
Geranium   Girl.     While  he  was  at  college 
he  asked  my  patient  to  help  amuse  this  girl, 
to  take  her  out  to  theatres,  etc.,  as  she  was 
very  lonely.     The  result  was  that  the  girl 
fell  in  love  wdth  my  patient,  though  he  was 
not  in  love  with  her.     (It  was  on  his  friend 
J.  that  his  own  affections  were  fixed.)     The 
situation  w^as  a  very  difficult  one.     He  felt 
disloyal  to  his  friend.     He  obviously  thought 
much  more  about  his  relations  with  his  friend 
J.  than  about  his  feelings  towards  the  girl. 
His  friend  never  knew  the  facts,  but  a  cool- 
ness sprang   up   between   them,  which  was 
intensely  painful  to  my  patient.     As  a  result 
he  shot  himself,  but  was  taken  to  hospital 
and  recovered.     He  saw  less  of  his  friend, 
however,   and   then   the  friend   died.     This 
was  a  definite  mental  wound  to  my  patient, 
and  set  up  a  mental  conflict,  the  result  of 
which   seems   to   have   been   an   amnesia,   a 


50     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

loss  of  memory.  There  was  a  tendency  for 
his  mind  to  split  up.  The  memories  were 
not  absent  from  his  soul,  however,  but 
remained  below  the  surface  to  produce  these 
attacks  in  which  he  went  through  all  these 
disturbing  experiences  again — through  all 
this  time  of  mental  conflict. 

What  can  one  say  of  his  earlier  history  ? 
As  a  boy  he  was  fairly  normal,  except  that 
he  noticed  that  he  always  had  a  great  desire 
to  sleep  in  the  middle  of  the  day.  He  would 
find  that  the  sight  of  anything  bright,  like 
a  field  of  snow,  would  make  him  drowsy. 
The  candles  in  the  chapel  of  the  Benedictine 
monastery,  where  he  was  at  school,  had  the 
same  effect  upon  him.  He  was  at  school  at 
this  monastery  from  the  age  of  about  1 1  to 
17,  and  formed  a  friendship  there  with  a 
much  older  boy.  In  the  course  of  this 
friendship  an  event  occurred  which  disturbed 
him  very  much.  It  was  his  duty  as  a  good 
Catholic  to  confess,  but  he  did  not  do  so. 
He  tried  to  put  it  out  of  his  mind  instead. 
He  thought  that  if  he  confessed  it  would  be 
serious  for  his  friend,  but  if  he  did  not  he 
would  be  committing  a  sin.     He  preferred  to 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  51 

commit  the  sin.  The  result  was  a  state  of 
mental  conflict,  followed  by  repression  and 
amnesia. 

These,  roughly,  are  the  main  facts  about 
his  life.  He  had  never  known  what  it  was 
to  fall  in  love  with  anyone  of  the  opposite 
sex,  but  all  through  his  life  he  had  had  strong 
feelings  of  friendship  towards  certain  people, 
especially  feelings  of  loyalty.  Although  he 
was  a  private  soldier,  he  was  a  most  intelli- 
gent man.  He  was  an  inventor,  and  struck 
me  as  being  very  able.  By  hypnosis, 
I  brought  up  some  of  these  facts  which 
he  had  himself  forgotten.  I  urged  him  to 
attempt  to  synthetize  his  own  mind — to  try 
to  improve  his  memory.  And  his  memory 
did  improve.  Under  hypnosis  he  worked  off 
a  good  deal  of  emotion.  (His  three  hysteri- 
cal attacks  had  all  been  cases  of  what  Breuer 
and  Freud  call  "  abreaction  " — the  working 
off  of  emotion— but  an  abreaction  which  was 
imperfect  and  incomplete.) 

He  now  began  to  dream.  He  dreamt 
night  after  night  that  he  was  trying  to  get 
to  a  certain  village  in  Sussex,  but  that  briers 
and   thorns   and  thick  hedges  kept  getting 


52     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 


in  his  way,  and  he  could  not  cut  his  way 
through.  At  last  he  met  an  old  man  in  rags, 
who  was  about  to  tell  him  something  about 
this  village,  when  he  woke  up.  I  tried  to 
interpret  the  dream  for  him,  but  things  did 
not  go  very  rapidly,  so  I  again  had  recourse 
to  hypnosis.  At  once  he  had  the  same  dream 
again,  and  could  tell  me  who  the  old  man  was  ; 
he  was  a  man  who  used  to  clean  windows  in 
this  village  in  Sussex.  He  also  knew  the 
reason  of  the  dream.  He  was  very  anxious 
about  the  fate  of  a  young  friend  of  his  who 
had  gone  to  France  during  the  War,  and 
whose  name  had  been  posted  among  the 
missing.  This  boy  had  been  in  the  habit  of 
going  to  this  village.  My  patient  did  not 
know  why  he  wxnt  there,  but  he  had  guessed 
that  there  was  a  romance  going  on.  He 
therefore  thought  that  his  friend,  whom  I 
will  call  C,  would,  if  he  wrote  at  all,  be 
likely  to  WTite  to  someone  in  this  village, 
possibly  to  the  window-cleaner.  That  was 
why  he  was  trying  to  get  to  the  village. 
Now,  there  were  certain  reasons  why  he 
had  tried  to  disguise  the  intensity  of  his 
feelings  even  from  himself.     The  result  of 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  53 

the  analysis  of  the  dream  was,  therefore, 
that  he  became  much  more  communicative, 
and  could  tell  me  very  much  more.  His 
friend,  he  said,  was  many  years  younger 
than  himself,  and,  years  ago,  they  had  been 
in  the  habit  of  going  fishing  together  a 
great  deal,  and  had  had  a  very  pleasant 
friendship.  They  had  thought  a  great  deal 
of  one  another. 

This  dream  ceased  after  it  had  been 
interpreted,  but  a  few  days  later  he  walked 
in  his  sleep.  He  could  not  tell  me  what 
he  had  dreamt  that  night,  but  what  actually 
had  happened  was  that  he  had  walked  from 
the  ward,  which  was  upstairs  in  the  hospital, 
downstairs,  and  had  awakened  to  find  that 
he  was  carrying  his  pillow-case.  I  discovered 
under  hypnosis  that  he  had  been  back  with 
his  young  friend.  They  were  fishing  to- 
gether, and  his  friend  had  sprained  his 
ankle.  My  patient  had  taken  a  canvas  bag 
and  had  fetched  cold  water  and  bathed  the 
ankle.  The  pillow-case  was  the  canvas  bag. 
The  curious  fact  was  that  he  did  not  re- 
member the  dream.  But  that  is  typical  of 
somnambulism.     I   have   never   met   a   case 


54     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

where  the  somnambulist  remembered  the 
dream,  though  hypnosis  will  bring  it  back. 
There  is  always  a  mental  cause  for  somnam- 
bulism. 

My  patient  now  told  me  other  things 
about  his  friend,  about  whom  he  was  still 
very  much  worried.  He  remembered  that, 
years  ago,  he  himself  noticed  that  he  could 
tell  fortunes  by  looking  into  a  black  polished 
stone,  and  on  one  occasion,  when  his  friend 
was  14  years  of  age,  he  saw  him  in  the 
stone  bleeding  at  the  mouth  and  at  the  point 
of  death,  and  he  now  felt  that  his  prevision 
had  come  true,  and  that  his  friend  had  been 
killed  by  the  Germans. 

A  week  or  two  later  he  came  to  me  and 
asked  me  to  have  him  confined  to  the 
hospital,  as  otherwise  he  was  afraid  that  he 
might  break  away  and  go  down  to  this 
particular  village.  I  offered  to  let  him  go, 
but  he  said  he  felt  that  he  ought  not  to  go. 
He  wished  to  get  well  first.  However,  a 
day  or  two  later  I  heard  that  he  was  missing, 
and  he  came  back  a  few  days  later  and  told 
me  this  story  :  He  was  having  his  hair  cut 
when  suddenly  he  had  seemed  to  lose  con- 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  55 

sciousness,  and  the  next  thing  he  had 
remembered  was  that  he  was  right  in  the 
country,  not  very  far  from  this  particular 
village.  He  could  not  remember  how  he 
had  got  there,  but,  being  in  the  neighbour- 
hood, he  had  thought  he  would  go  to  the 
village.  He  had  done  so,  and  to  his  great 
joy  he  had  discovered  that  his  friend  C. 
had  escaped  from  the  Germans  and  was 
now  safe  in  Egypt. 

He  was  unable  to  tell  me  how  he  did 
this.  Under  hypnosis,  however,  he  told  me 
that  he  had  an  impulse  to  go,  ran  the  gauntlet 
of  the  military  police,  and  took  a  bus  into 
the  country.  He  was  taken  up  by  a  motor 
car  and  given  a  lift.  Then  his  consciousness 
changed.  That  was  the  point  at  which  his 
main  consciousness  resumed  its  sway.  The 
result  of  all  this  was  that  his  mind  was  at  last 
at  ease  about  his  friend  C,  and  he  made  a 
good  recovery.  All  the  time  his  memory 
for  earlier  experiences  during  the  War  had 
been  improving. 

Such  a  clinical  history  illustrates,  very 
typically,  the  nature  of  hysteria.  This  flight 
from   hospital    is    what    the    French    call    a 


56     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

"  fugue."     It    was    a    symptom    frequently 
observed    in    France.     A    number    of    my 
patients  were  in  danger  of  court-martial  and 
death  for  flight  from  the  line.     (Many  others 
pretended  loss  of  memory,  but  it  was  quite 
easy  to  distinguish  such  malingerers.  Genuine 
cases  are  always  extremely  easy  to  hypnotize.) 
This  case  also  illustrates  dissociation.     It  is 
similar  to  hundreds  of  cases  one  met  in  France 
immediately  after  the  men  had  been  under 
shell  fire.     It  also  illustrates  mental  conflict, 
the   prolonged    reaction-time  of  Jung,  and 
the  ignorance  of  the  main  consciousness  as 
to  what  is  going  on  below  the  surface.     It 
illustrates  the  significant  character  of  dreams 
— their  symbolic  nature — and  how,  in  many 
cases,  apparent  clairvoyance  is  merely  hys- 
teria.    This    man    was    convinced    that    he 
had  clairvoyant  powers,  and  was  (wrongly) 
convinced     by    this     that    his    friend    was 
dead. 

Another  thing  I  ought  to  have  mentioned 
was  that,  just  after  his  last  attack,  he  was 
allowed  in  the  grounds  of  the  hospital,  and 
suddenly  thought  that  he  saw  his  friend  C. 
about  twenty  yards  in  front  of  him,  walking 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  57 

along.     He  was  delighted  to  see  him,  and 
hurried  after  him,  but  then  noticed  that  he 
made  no  sound  in  walking,  although  he  was 
wearing  heavy  service  boots.     Then  he  dis- 
appeared.    It   was   an   hallucination.     (Ex- 
treme cases  of  hysteria  show  hallucinations 
of    this    kind.      They    are    curable.)      His 
dreams  were  of  the  same  nature.     After  all 
his  attacks  he  dreamt  very  vividly,  but  he 
could    not    tell    me   what    his   dreams   were 
about,    except    under   hypnosis.     I    became 
rather  tired  of  hypnotizing  him  so  often, 
and  sometimes  tried  talking  to  him  for  a 
long  time,  but  progress  by  this  means  was 
slower,  and  there  seemed  to  be  no  theoretical 
or  practical   reason   why   I   should   not   use 
hypnosis    to    accelerate    the    analysis.     His 
ultimate  recovery  was  due  to  this  analysis 
and  resynthesis. 

Before  I  turn  to  another  part  of  my  subject 
I  should  like  to  make  it  quite  clear — or  as 
clear  as  I  can — in  what  respect  one  may 
consider  hypnosis  a  justifiable  method  of 
treatment,  and  in  what  respect  not  only  the 
ordinary  popular,  but  the  ordinary  medical, 
idea  of  it  is  wrong. 


58     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

Unfortunately,  the  members  of  the  Nancy 
school,  who  undertook  to  criticize  Charcot 
and  his  disciples  (Pierre  Janet,  etc.)  of  the 
Salpetriere,  whilst  making  a  great  advance 
in  the  subject  of  suggestion,  have  hopelessly 
confused  the  question  of  hypnosis.  I  am 
probably  speaking  in  a  small  minority  in 
this  matter,  but,  as  a  result  of  my  experience 
in  hypnotizing  five  or  six  hundred  patients 
out  of  about  six  thousand  shell-shock  cases 
seen  during  the  past  few  years,  I  have  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  Pierre  Janet  is  abso- 
lutely right  when  he  says  that  only  the 
hysteric  can  be  deeply  hypnotized,  and  that 
hypnosis  is  an  artificially  produced  hysteria. 
More  than  that,  I  agree  with  Janet  that  the 
word  should  be  limited  to  the  production  of 
artificial  somnambulism.  For  lighter  stages 
of  the  same  process  of  artificial  dissociation 
the  words  *'hypnoidal  state,"  '' hypnoidiza- 
tion"  should  be  used,  as  Boris  Sidis  first 
suggested. 

It  is  a  fact  that  hypnosis  is  not  the  same 
thing  as  suggestion,  although  as  a  general 
rule  it  does  involve  an  increase  of  sugges- 
tibility.      Of    the    two    characteristics     of 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  59 

hypnosis — dissociation  and  increased  sug- 
gestibility— the  former  seems  to  be  the  more 
essential  one. 

It  is  also  a  fact  that,  if  one  finds  a 
patient  suffering  from  a  functional  amnesia 
— that  is,  a  loss  of  memory,  of  greater  or  less 
extent,  due  to  an  emotional  shock — if  there 
is  no  sign  of  physical  injury,  and  if  one  has 
no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  has  sustained  a 
definite  physical  shock,  one  may  then  be 
absolutely  certain  of  being  able  to  hypnotize 
him.  On  the  other  hand,  if  one  turns  to 
cases,  equally  free  from  organic  lesion,  which 
do  not  show  this  tendency  towards  *'  func- 
tional "  dissociation,  one  will  find  that 
hypnosis  fails.  The  Nancy  school — Bern- 
heim  and  his  followers — say  that  it  should  be 
possible  to  hypnotize  98  per  cent,  of  one's 
cases,  and  that  anyone  who  fails  to  hypnotize 
90  per  cent,  does  not  know  his  work.  Per- 
sonally, I  should  there  again  agree  with 
Janet  in  saying  that  these  people  are  calling 
by  the  name  of  hypnosis  something  which 
is  rather  different.  It  is  true  that,  in  cases 
of  shell  shock  seen  immediately  after  the 
shock  has  occurred,  where  there  is  amnesia 


6o     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

and  dissociation,  one  can  almost  always 
hypnotize  one's  patients.  Literally  loo  per 
cent,  of  these  cases  could  be  hypnotized  if 
one  took  the  trouble  to  draw  the  proper 
distinctions  and  did  not  attempt  to  hypnotize 
cases  that  belonged  to  another  category — 
that  is,  if  one  made  one's  diagnosis  first  ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  if  one  turns  to  what 
have  been  called  "  anxiety  states  " — <:ases  of 
obsessions  or  ordinary  cases  of  neurasthenia 
— these  cases  are  not  hypnotizable,  if  one 
follows  Janet  in  his  use  of  the  word  to  signify 
the  production  of  a  second  state,  where  the 
patient  does  not  remember  what  has  previ- 
ouslyoccurred  and  will  again  fail  to  remember 
what  has  just  been  going  on  unless  one  gives 
a  post-hypnotic  suggestion  that  he  will.  It 
is  true  that  in  98  per  cent,  of  cases  one  can,  by 
using  certain  means,  get  a  state  of  increased 
suggestibility,  so  that,  if  one  suggests  that  the 
patient's  eyelids  will  get  heavy,  that  he  will 
lose  feeling  in  his  limbs,  and  so  on,  all  this 
will  come  about ;  but  if,  in  cases  like  this,  one 
succeeds  in  producing  the  hypnotic  state, then 
one  has  either  to  do  with  a  case  of  hysteria 
or  one  has  made  the  patient  hysterical. 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  6i 

Is  it  possible  to  make  a  person  hysterical 
who  is  not  so  originally  ?  That  is  a  doubtful 
matter.  Personally  I  should  be  inclined 
to  disbelieve  it.  A  person  who  is  hysterical 
has  probably  been  hysterical  from  his  birth 
— it  is  probably  an  inherited  form  of  mental 
weakness. 

Suggestion,  then,  is  different  from  hyp- 
nosis. It  is  used,  or  may  be  used,  for  a 
different  purpose.  We  have  advocated  the 
use  of  hypnosis  as  a  means  of  recovering 
dissociated  memories,  functions,  etc.,  and 
also  as  a  means  of  giving  outlet  to  bottled-up 
emotion,  to  use  a  rather  popular  phrase. 
We  have  not  used  it  as  a  means  of  applying 
suggestion.  One  certainly  finds,  in  some 
cases,  that  the  more  deeply  one  hypnotizes 
the  patient  the  more  suggestible  he  becomes, 
but,  in  other  cases,  one  may  find  that 
suggestibility  is  not  greatly  increased.  More 
than  that,  one  may  find  that  people  who  are 
not  hypnotizable  may  be  suggestible,  and  that 
their  suggestibility  may  be  increased  with- 
out any  sign  of  hypnosis  coming  on.  One 
can  use  suggestion  without  using  hypnosis 
at  all. 


62     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

This  view  is  certainly  different  from  that 
of  the  Nancy  school.  It  is  nearer  to  Char- 
cot's view,  for  Charcot  worked  extensively 
with  hysterics  by  methods  of  somnambulism 
artificially  produced,  which  is  definitely  the 
hypnotic  state.  Charcot  was  misled,  how- 
ever, in  his  ideas  of  the  regularity  of  the 
phenomena.  He  thought  that  he  could 
distinguish  definite  stages  in  all  cases  of 
hypnosis,  including,  for  example,  the  atti- 
tudes passionelles  of  major  hysteria.  The 
question  of  suggestion  with  him  was  mixed 
up  with  that  of  hypnosis,  although  his  own 
cases  mainly  illustrate  the  facts  of  hypnosis 
itself.  The  relation  of  hypnosis  to  sugges- 
tion is  discussed  more  fully  in  Chapters 
VII  and  VIII. 

Finally,  the  question  arises  with  these 
cases  of  artificial  somnambulism,  might  not 
the  same  curative  results  be  obtained  by 
longer  methods  without  having  recourse  to 
hypnosis  ?  To  a  certain  extent  this  is 
possible,  but  the  results  are  not  quite  the 
same.  In  the  first  place,  if  you  are  going 
to  use  the  ordinary  method  of  questioning 
your  patients  again  and  again,  and  encourag- 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  63 

ing  them  to  tell  you  more  and  more  of  what 
comes  to  their  minds,  you  will  certainly  find 
that  their  dissociated  memories  will  tend 
to  come  to  the  surface,  and,  as  the  investiga- 
tion proceeds,  the  recovery  of  these  memories 
may  become  more  and  more  complete.  But 
the  method  requires  a  much  greater  expendi- 
ture of  time,  and  the  memories  are  seldom 
thus  recoverable  in  all  their  details.  In  the 
second  place,  you  do  not  obtain  the  hallu- 
cinatory vividness  of  emotion  obtained  under 
hypnosis.  The  abreaction  under  suggestion 
is  not  so  vivid.  If  anyone  objects  that  by 
hypnotizing  a  patient  you  are  making  him 
hysterical,  the  reply  is  that  he  must  be 
hysterical  already,  otherwise  he  would  not 
be  hypnotizable,  and  that  one  is  justified  in 
using  a  pathological  state  to  assist  a  cure,  if 
it  really  does  so.  There  are  medical  instances 
of  the  use  of  vaccines,  etc.,  which  are  perhaps 
analogous.  Anyhow,  the  final  test  is  the 
test  of  results,  and  one  finds  in  these  cases 
that  if  the  hypnotizing  is  not  repeated  too 
frequently,  and  if  it  is  carried  out  by  some- 
one who  understands  to  a  certain  extent 
what  is  going  on,  and  who  knows  that  the 


64     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

subject  is  suffering  from  dissociation,  that 
he  must  resist  this  tendency  in  the  subject, 
and  must  help  him  more  and  more  to  a 
resynthesis  of  his  personality,  then  the  results 
justify  its  use.  You  do  not  get  recurrences 
of  the  dissociation.  Pierre  Janet  has  recently 
reviewed  nearly  two  hundred  of  his  earlier 
cases  of  major  hysteria,  and  shown  that  in  the 
vast  majority  of  them  there  is  no  recurrence. 
In  the  cases  where  relapses  did  occur,  Janet 
found  that  he  had  not  gone  deeply  enough 
into  the  causes  of  the  dissociation,  that  he 
had  not  brought  all  the  causes  to  light. 

As  regards  the  many  hundreds  of  cases 
that  I  myself  sent  down  from  the  casualty 
clearing  stations  during  the  War,  it  was,  of 
course,  difficult  to  get  after-histories,  but 
I  was  able  to  get  such  after-histories  with 
thirty  extreme  cases  of  hysterical  dissociation. 
These  patients  had  all  suffered  from  loss  of 
voice  and  hearing,  paralysis,  intense  tremors, 
and  extensive  amnesias.  In  all  of  these 
cases  but  one  the  reports  that  have  come  to 
me  from  the  base  hospitals  in  England  admit 
that  there  have  been  no  relapses  at  all  ;  that 
the  cure  has  proceeded  still  further  under  the 


HYSTERIA  AS  A  DISSOCIATION  65 

later  treatment  at  these  hospitals  ;  and  that 
there  has  been  no  tendency  for  other  symp- 
toms to  appear.  In  one  case  alone  a  hysteri- 
cal tendency  remained.  It  was  the  case  of 
a  boy  whom  I  had  treated  for  loss  of  voice, 
and  who  showed  weakness  of  the  legs  at  the 
time  when  he  reached  England.  I  saw  from 
the  analysis  of  the  case,  however,  that  he  was 
suffering  from  a  shock  received  in  early  life. 
In  such  cases  one  had  not  time  to  go  fully 
into  the  past  histories  of  the  patients,  as 
one  can  do  now  in  England  ;  one  had  not 
always  the  opportunity  of  using  the  method 
of  hypnosis  to  discover  more  deeply  buried 
memories.  In  the  large  majority  of  cases 
the  patients  seemed  to  be  naturally  pre- 
disposed to  hysteria,  but  to  have  been  quite 
healthy  before  the  shell  shock,  and  in  such 
cases  the  working  off  of  the  bottled-up 
emotion  and  the  resynthetizing  of  the  mind 
was  quite  sufficient  to  produce  a  permanent 
recovery. 

Hypnotism  is  a  method  which  should  only 
be  used  in  cases  of  definite  loss  of  memory 
combined  with  loss  of  other  psycho-physical 
functions.     Such  cases  are  easily  hypnotized 

5 


66     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

— anyone  should  be  able  to  hypnotize  them. 
You  do  not  need  to  hypnotize  them  deeply, 
only  just  sufficiently  to  recover  the  lost 
memories  and  produce  abreaction.  Then, 
later,  you  should  resynthetize  the  patient, 
and  always,  as  a  matter  of  course,  you  should 
investigate  his  past  history  and  endeavour 
to  link  up  his  dissociated  stretch  of  memories 
with  his  past,  and  also  with  his  more  imme- 
diate present.  If  you  do  this  you  will  find 
that  you  have  made  him  less  hypnotizable 
than  he  was  when  he  first  came  to  you.  That 
is,  after  all,  the  test.  If  you  have  done  real 
good  to  your  patient  he  should  leave  you  less 
hypnotizable  than  he  was  when  he  came  to 
you.  This,  however,  is  not  always  possible. 
In  some  cases  the  patient  is  so  hysterical  and 
suggestible,  his  powers  of  mental  synthesis 
are  so  weakened,  that  this  character  of 
hypnotizability  persists  unabated.  In  many 
cases,  on  the  other  hand,  one  can  observe  its 
gradual  diminution,  and,  corresponding  with 
this,  one  finds  that  the  patient's  general 
mental  condition  improves. 


CHAPTER  V 

NEURASTHENIA   AND   COMPULSION 
NEUROSIS 

We  come  now  to  a  consideration  of  other 
forms  of  functional  disease  which  are  de- 
scribed under  the  names  of  neurasthenia  and 
compulsion  neurosis.  Compulsion  neurosis 
comprises  the  different  forms  of  phobias  and 
obsessions.  Pierre  Janet  describes  these  cases 
of  compulsion  neurosis,  along  with  others, 
under  the  heading  of  psychasthenia,  and, 
although  his  clinical  descriptions  are  very 
detailed  and  very  valuable,  they  do  some- 
what confuse  the  question,  because  he  has 
not  made  a  very  clear  distinction  between 
what  the  Germans  and  some  of  the  French 
have  designated  compulsion  neurosis,  and 
other  forms  of  neurosis. 

First,  let    us  consider  neurasthenia  quite 
briefly.     Dejerine  points  out  that  the  neuras- 

67 


68     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

thenic  suffers  from  preoccupations  and  in- 
creased suggestibility  as  regards  personal 
health.  He  has  become  worried,  perhaps, 
by  some  mental  difSculty  in  his  life  which  he 
cannot  adequately  grapple  with.  He  worries 
about  it  more  and  more — finds  himself 
spending  more  and  more  time  in  thinking 
about  it,  and  thinks  about  it  in  an  emotional 
way,  in  a  personal,  subjective  way.  He  is 
unable,  through  lowering  of  his  powers  of 
mental  resistance  at  the  time,  to  take  an 
impersonal,  objective  view  of  the  situation. 
He  identifies  himself  with  it  more  and  more 
until  it  becomes  a  preoccupation — not  an 
obsession  ;  an  obsession  is  something  that 
is  past  a  certain  stage  towards  abnormality. 
The  emotional  character  of  the  preoccupation 
perhaps  itself  tends,  on  the  one  hand,  to 
fatigue  the  patient — there  is  nothing  so 
fatiguing  as  emotion,  continual  anxiety,  and 
worry — and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  makes  him 
more  suggestible  in  reference  to  anything 
bearing  upon  the  preoccupation.  If  his 
health  fails,  as  it  is  almost  sure  to  do,  if  his 
digestion,  etc.,  gets  out  of  order,  his  atten- 
tion will  be  directed  towards  this  inadequate 


NEURASTHENIA  69 

functioning  of  his  digestive  organs,  and  this 
attention  will  be  of  an  emotional  nature,  and 
will  increase  the  disorder.  Thus  a  vicious 
circle  is  set  up.  The  rate  of  digestion  may 
perhaps  be  slowed  down,  owing  to  the  patient's 
fatigued  condition,  wdth  the  result  that  the 
process  of  digestion  is  itself  disturbed,  and 
this  disturbance  then  produces  real  intestinal 
disorders.  The  beginning  of  it  all,  however, 
was  mental,  and  the  cure  is  again  mental.  In 
order  to  break  through  that  vicious  circle 
you  must  attack  it  in  the  right  place — namely, 
on  the  mental  side.  If  you  attack  it  on  the 
physical  side,  you  may  get  a  temporary 
improvement — you  may  be  able  to  reduce 
the  acidity  of  the  stomach,  etc.,  but  the  worry 
will  still  be  going  on  all  the  time,  tending 
to  set  up  the  same  condition  again.  Once 
the  body  has  given  way  in  any  particular 
function,  as  a  result  of  a  mental  trouble,  that 
particular  part  of  the  body  has  become  weaker, 
and  as  the  mental  trouble  increases  again  it 
will  break  through  in  the  same  place. 
Dejerine  points  out  that  the  neurasthenic  is 
more  suggestible  even  than  the  hysteric.  One 
is  inclined  to  agree  with  him.     The  neuras- 


70     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

thenic  is  very  suggestible  with  regard  to  his 
health. 

How  is  a  neurasthenic  patient  to  be  treated? 
Obviously  by  reasoning  with  him — not  by 
ordinary  moral  reasoning,  but  by  inquiring 
into  the  original  cause  of  his  symptoms. 
He  may  tell  you  that  his  stomach  gave  out, 
etc.  etc.,  a  year  or  two  before,  but  you  must 
not  stop  there  in  his  history.  You  must  go 
back  to  what  happened  years  before,  for  there 
is  often  a  long  period  of  incubation  with 
these  disturbances.  Then  you  may  get  a 
history  of  an  emotional  shock — not  neces- 
sarily a  sudden  shock — though  sometimes  a 
sudden  shock  which  with  an  hysteric  would 
perhaps  have  caused  a  dissociation  straight 
away,  will  in  these  cases  produce  an  aggrava- 
tion of  that  tendency  to  worry  and  to  feel 
anxious  that  we  all  have.  This  tendency  to 
experience  anxiety  is  a  normal  tendency  ;  it 
is  a  very  important  one,  because  in  these 
mental  cases  it  is  so  frequently  exaggerated. 
Anxiety  is  an  emotion  which  stirs  us  up 
and  makes  us  really  investigate  a  matter. 
Let  us  consider  the  typical  example  of  an 
undergraduate    who    is    preparing    for    his 


NEURASTHENIA  71 


finals.  Perhaps  he  has  not  been  workmg 
very  hard,  but  as  the  examination  draws 
near  he  begins  to  get  into  a  panic  and  really 
feels  too  ill  for  anything,  and  does  not  seem 
able  to  do  any  work.  It  is  a  very  good  thing 
for  an  undergraduate  to  experience  anxiety 
of  this  sort,  as  it  makes  him  take  stock  of  his 
knowledge  and  find  out  what  he  really  does 
know.  His  mind  is  thus  worked  up  to 
meet  the  situation.  If,  again,  we  are  faced 
with  any  definite  peril,  physical  or  mental, 
we  have  this  same  feeling  of  anxiety,  which 
wakes  us  up  and  makes  us  more  alert,  though 
if  it  is  too  intense  it  defeats  its  own  end.  It 
is  a  different  emotion  from  that  of  fear.  The 
French  have  described  it  in  very  great 
detail  (cf.  Les  Anxieux^  par  Devaux  et 
Logre,  Masson  et  Cie,  19 17).  This  state 
of  anxiety  is  exaggerated  in  the  neurasthenic. 
He  fails  to  pass  on  to  a  more  ordered  form 
of  mental  activity,  to  grapple  with  the  situa- 
tion (as,  of  course,  all  these  psycho-neurotics 
fail  to  do,  in  one  way  or  another),  and  he 
expends  the  energy,  which  he  should  be  using 
to  deal  with  the  situation,  in  intensifying 
the  idea  still  more,  in  keeping  up  the  worry. 


72      SUGGESTION  AND    MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

and  finally  disturbing  the  state  of  his  physical 
health. 

If  you  go  over  the  matter  again  with  him, 
if  you  talk  over  his  past  with  him  and  get 
him  to  look  at  it  from  his  present  point  of 
view,  to  take  an  objective  view  of  it  as  if  he 
were  considering  it  as  someone  else's  history, 
you  will  find  that  he  will  recover.  One 
might  suggest  that  the  result  is  partly  due  to 
a  diminution  of  suggestibility— that  at  least 
is  my  own  view.  What  analysis  does  in 
helping  neurasthenic  patients  is,  I  believe, 
to  diminish  their  suggestibility.  The  better 
they  understand  how  their  symptoms  arose, 
and  what  exactly  was  the  sequence  of  their 
mental  experiences,  the  less  suggestible  they 
become,  not  only  as  to  their  own  past  but 
also  as  to  the  future.  You  have  made  them 
stronger  personalities  altogether.  That  is 
why  I  have  suggested  a  word  to  sum  up  the 
matter — the  word  ''  autognosis,''  self-under- 
standing. What  you  do  in  these  cases  is  to 
help  the  patients  to  understand  how  their 
disease  arose  and  to  understand  their  symp- 
toms. Autognosis  is  simply  a  word  corre- 
sponding  to   such   insight.     This   does   not 


NEURASTHENIA  73 

comprise  the  whole  method  of  cure,  however. 
The  patient  has  in  many  cases  to  be  re- 
educated. You  have  not  only  to  get  him  to 
understand  how  and  why  he  went  wrong  in 
the  past  ;  he  must  have  practice  in  using  his 
energies  in  a  different  way  in  the  future. 
This  is  the  case  with  physical  disabilities, 
and  it  is  the  same  with  mental  disabilities. 

Now,  a  method  like  this  is  obviously 
far  superior  to  the  method  of  hypnosis. 
No  one  who  understood  his  business  would 
dream  of  attempting  to  hypnotize  a  neuras- 
thenic. In  the  neurasthenic,  as  in  the  hys- 
teric, there  is  certainly  bottled-up  emotion. 
It  seems  to  be  a  tendency  in  everyone's  life 
for  emotion  to  cling  to  experiences.  We 
must  all  have  noticed  this.  If  we  hate  a 
person  we  find  that  the  feeling  of  hatred 
clings  to  all  sorts  of  things  connected  with 
that  person  ;  it  links  them  up  with  the 
experience  itself.  If  we  make  it  up  with 
the  person  afterwards,  it  is  not  easy  at  first  to 
get  rid  of  the  emotional  feeling  connected 
with  him.  The  same  thing  happens,  as  is 
well  known,  in  the  experience  of  falling  in 
love.     If  we  fall  in  love  we  experience  cer- 


74     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

tain  sentimental  feelings  in  regard  to  a 
certain  person,  and  we  extend  this  feeling 
in  some  degree  to  a  great  many  things 
connected  with  him.  If  we  afterwards  fall 
out  of  love  again,  these  sentimental  feelings 
will  continue  to  be  connected  in  our  mind 
with  certain  experiences,  and  this  association 
only  dies  out  very  gradually.  In  these  cases 
of  neurasthenia  too  much  emotion  has  been 
linked  up  with  certain  experiences,  too  little 
with  other  experiences.  This  has  tended 
to  produce  conflict,  strain.  The  more  this 
has  happened  the  more  a  person  is  repressed 
and  unnatural,  or  mentally  awkward.  Cer- 
tainly this  characteristic  of  repression,  of 
awkwardness  of  the  mind,  is  definitely  reduced 
to  a  minimum  by  an  autognostic  working 
over  of  past  experiences,  affording  an  oppor- 
tunity for  the  dammed-up  emotion  to  flow 
out  along  association  channels  to  other 
thoughts,  to  come  out  in  talking  things  over 
and  explaining  past  experiences.  This  does 
not  mean,  however,  that  in  the  end  you  will 
have  drained  off  all  the  emotion  from  a 
person's  past — that  certainly  does  not  happen 
— you  do  not  by  releasing  bottled-up  emo- 


NEURASTHENIA  75 

tion  leave  the  experience  without  emotion 
at  all.  (You  can  test  this  quite  easily  in 
hypnotic  cases.)  The  patient  works  off  a 
lot  of  surplus  emotion,  but  if  you  return  to  the 
same  experience  again  later  on,  you  will 
find  that  there  is  still  emotion  there  though 
it  is  not  so  intense.  You  can  test  this  again 
and  again,  and,  after  the  first  one  or  two 
times,  you  will  find  that  the  amount  of 
emotional  reaction  remains  constant — it  will 
not  be  absent.  You  can  go  back  to  certain 
memories  as  often  as  you  like,  but  you  will 
always  find  some  emotion  there.  It  is  my 
view  that  all  memories  of  one's  past  life 
carry  their  own  emotion  with  them,  but  it  is 
additional  emotion  that  has  to  be  worked  off 
in  the  neurasthenic  as  in  any  other  form  of 
psycho-neurosis. 

Obsessions  and  Phobias 

I  now  turn  to  obsessions  and  phobias, 
called  by  German  writers  compulsion  neu- 
rosis, because  the  patient  feels  compelled 
to  think  or  to  do  certain  things.  A  very 
common  symptom  which  most  of  these 
patients  exhibit  is  a  feeling  of  doubt  and 


-](>     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

uncertainty  as  to  what  they  have  just  done. 
Perhaps  they  are  going  to  bed  at  night  and 
are  not  quite  sure  that  they  have  turned  off 
the  electric  light  or  the  gas  downstairs.  This 
is  a  very  common  symptom  indeed.  Another 
very  common  symptom  is  the  feeling  that 
they  must  be  continually  washing  their 
hands.  Another  is  that  they  must  read 
everything  that  is  in  the  newspaper,  or, 
perhaps,  that  they  must  read  every  advertise- 
ment that  they  see.  I  knew  one  man  who 
used  to  read  all  the  advertisements  that  he  saw 
on  his  way  home  from  work.  On  one  occa- 
sion he  decided  that  he  would  give  this  up, 
and  he  did  manage  to  reach  home  without 
reading  any  of  them,  but  he  could  not  be 
happy  until  he  had  returned  and  had  read 
them  all  carefully.  That  is,  of  course,  an 
extreme  case.  A  very  simple  tendency 
which  one  may  find  in  a  great  many  people  is 
the  tendency  to  walk  along  the  pavement  in 
such  a  way  that,  at  each  step,  their  feet  avoid 
touching  the  line  of  demarcation  between 
the  paving  stones.  It  is  a  tendency  that 
people  who  are  quite  sane  and  normal  may 
have,  but  it  is  an  incipient  form  of  the  same 


NEURASTHENIA  77 

sort  of  thing.  These  are  obsessions — the 
patients  are  obsessed  by  a  tendency  to  think 
or  to  act  in  a  certain  way. 

Then  there  are  phobias,  or  fears — patho- 
logically intensified  fears.  A  very  common 
phobia  is  the  fear  of  heights.  A  phobia 
seems  sometimes  to  be  an  exaggerated  fear 
of  the  ordinary  type,  but  in  other  cases  one 
may  find  people  fearing  things  that  no  ordi- 
nary person  would  dream  of  fearing. 

Before  turning  to  explanations,  one  ought 
to  describe  in  a  little  more  detail  the  state 
of  mind  of  these  patients.  Besides  the 
actual  obsession  or  phobia,  one  has  to  attack 
in  these  patients  a  constant  feeling  of  anxiety. 
Constitutional  anxiety  seems  to  be  intensified 
in  them,  to  be  continuous  throughout  their 
lives,  and  to  become  more  acute  under  certain 
conditions.  To  anticipate  what  I  shall  say 
later,  one  usually  finds  that,  if  one  succeeds 
for  a  time  in  curing  a  patient  of  his  obsession 
or  phobia,  he  will  return  to  this  mental 
tendency.  One  of  my  patients  felt  a  constant 
anxiety  lest  he  should  return  to  an  obsession 
of  some  kind  or  other — a  feeling  which  could 
not  be  allayed.     Freud  has  a  very  interesting 


78     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

theory  as  regards  compulsion  neurosis.  He 
says  that  the  patient  is  really  obsessed  about 
the  wrong  thing.  What  has  happened  is 
that  in  the  past,  at  some  time  or  other,  some- 
thing has  gone  wrong  with  the  development 
of  his  psycho-sexual  life.  He  has  done 
something  that  he  is  ashamed  of,  and  which 
was  charged  with  an  intense  emotion  of  a 
painful  nature  which  he  has  tried  to  repress 
and  to  drive  out  of  his  mind.  He  has 
only  succeeded  in  dissociating  the  emotion 
from  the  memory.  The  memory  thus  be- 
comes harmless  and  walks  quietly  into  the 
unconscious,  but  the  emotion  has  still  to 
be  dealt  with,  and  finds  its  way  along  associa- 
tion channels  to  other  less  suspicious  ideas 
and  memories.  The  patient,  who  should 
be  worried  about  some  guilty  thought  or 
act  of  the  past,  is  now  worried  about  some- 
thing which  is  obviously  innocent  and  harm- 
less. Thus  the  obsession  is  really  disguised 
vice.^  In  certain  cases  this  does  work  out 
according  to  theory.     You  do  sometimes  find 

^  According  to  tlie  more  recent  form  of  Freud's  theory,  an 
obsession  is  a  reaction  formation  to  some  tendency  of  very  early 
life.     See  Psychology  and  Psycho-therapy^  ?•  35* 


NEURASTHENIA  79 

that  you  gradually  bring  up  past  experiences 
which  are  out  of  harmony  with  the  patient's 
general  character,  and  which  have  been 
repressed.  When  these  memories  are  re- 
called, they  and  the  obsessing  emotion  link 
up  together  again,  and  everything  is  all 
right  once  more — the  patient  is  no  longer 
obsessed.  In  the  case  I  referred  to  just  now, 
my  patient,  who  was  a  bank  clerk,  had  an 
obsession  of  infection.  He  used  also  to  tear 
up  circulars,  and  then  worry  as  to  whether 
he  ought  to  have  read  them  before  tearing 
them  up,  etc.  etc.  He  was  a  homo-sexual, 
and  I  discovered  that,  at  the  age  of  15,  he 
thought  that  he  had  led  a  younger  boy 
astray.  He  described  this  incident  to  me 
with  great  emotion,  with  the  result  that  the 
obsession  disappeared,  permanently  as  far 
as  I  know,  but  there  remained  a  general 
feeling  of  anxiety.  My  further  treatment, 
naturally,  was  to  carry  my  analysis  still  more 
deeply  into  his  past.  This  analysis  definitely 
helped  me  to  trace  back  his  tendency  to 
homo-sexuality,  and  to  bring  out  many 
other  emotional  experiences  of  his  past  life, 
and,  as  far  as  I  can  make  out,  he  recovered. 


8o     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

It  seems  to  me  that  one  cannot  well  lay 
down  a  single  definite  generalization  about 
such  cases,  but  one  is  certainly  tempted  to 
believe  that  a  very  important  factor  in  com- 
pulsion neurosis  is  great  exaggeration  of  the 
innate  tendency  towards  anxiety  which  these 
patients  possess.  That  is  w^hy  analysis  some- 
times does  not  help  the  patient  much — may 
even  make  him  worse — and  why  suggestion 
treatment  often  does  make  the  patient  better. 
In  the  past  people  have  often  claimed  to 
have  hypnotized  such  cases  and  to  have  made 
them  better  by  this  method.  Janet,  how- 
ever, says  in  his  latest  book  ^  that  he  does  not 
understand  these  reports,  and  my  experience 
bears  him  out.  I  do  not  think  that  these 
cases  are  hypnotizable,  though  one  may 
temporarily  increase  their  suggestibility  by 
making  them  passive,  and  thus  help  them  to 
fight  down  their  fixed  idea  and  also  to  get 
rid  of  this  general  tendency  towards  anxiety. 
One  may  keep  them  in  this  attitude  whilst 
they  regain  their  physical  and  mental  health. 

Nevertheless,  in  many  cases  a  course  of 
autognostic  treatment,  with  little  or  no 
suggestion,  is  sufficient  to  produce  a  cure. 

1  Les  medications  pychologiques.     Paris :    Felix  Alcan,  1919* 


CHAPTER  VI 

A  CASE  OF  HYSTERICAL  EPILEPSY  AND 
AMNESIA— WITH  DREAMS 

The  following  case  seems  to  be  worth  quoting 
in  detail,  since  it  illustrates  the  way  in  which 
a  series  of  dreams  may  reveal  thoughts,  fears, 
anxieties,  and  temptations  present  in  the 
subconscious  without  much  distortion.  Their 
general  meaning  will  be  clear  to  the  reader, 
in  the  light  of  what  has  been  explained  in 
earlier  chapters.  The  patient  himself  learnt 
to  appreciate  their  significance  in  the  course 
of  analysis,  and  eventually  came  to  face  the 
anxieties,  etc.,  about  his  wife  and  children 
in  a  comparatively  normal  way  through  the 
process  of  autognosis  and  with  the  help  of 
suggestion  and  auto-suggestion.  But  it  will 
be  realized  that  the  actual  situation  was  a 
painful  one,  almost  impossible  to  alter,  and 
very  difficult  for  the  patient  to  face  with 
resignation. 

6  8i 


82     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

The  working  of  the  '*  mother  complex," 
i.e.  early  fixation  of  his  affections  on  his 
mother,  is  apparent  in  the  dreams. 

Pte.  A,  H,,  8th  Scottish  Rifles,  aged  24, 
M.,  R.G.  Admitted  to  Maghull  Military 
Hospital  from  Netley. 

At  the  Dardanelles :  taken  with  a  fit  just 
before  reaching  the  trenches.  Patient  does 
not  remember  anything  more  till  he  came 
off  the  boat  at  Portsmouth.  Netley.  Mag- 
hull. 

Patient  is  depressed,  has  occasional  head- 
aches ;  loss  of  appetite  and  of  sleep. 

At  age  of  2  years  fell  from  his  sister's  arms 
and  struck  his  right  temple  ;  unconscious. 
Had  fits  when  a  child  (see  p.  85). 

Age  19. — First  fit,  about  seven  months 
after  his  wife  gave  birth  to  his  first  child. 

Age  21. — Second  fit,  shortly  after  his 
second  child  was  born.  His  wife  became 
depressed  after  the  birth  of  each  of  his 
two  children.  Her  mother  and  grandfather 
both  died  of  melancholia  in  an  asylum. 

No  other  fits  till  the  one  in  Gallipoli. 

Patient  seems  to  have  been  worrying 
about  his  wife's  health  at  the  time  of  each 


HYSTERICAL   EPILEPSY,    WITH   DREAMS    83 

fit,  except  the  last  (third)  in  Gallipoli,  when 
it  was  principally  his  children  that  he  was 
concerned  about,  although  he  was  also  worry- 
ing about  his  wife,  not  having  heard  from 
her  for  over  three  weeks.  The  doctor  had 
told  him  never  to  leave  his  wife  alone  with 
the  children. 

Patient  is  worrying  now,  lest  his  wife, 
hearing  that  he  is  at  Maghull  for  fits,  may 
be  upset  and  become  melancholic  and  neglect 
the  two  children. 

After  his  marriage  at  age  of  19  he  never 
cared  for  company.  Always  felt  quiet. 
Didn't  care  for  rough  company.  Always 
thought  too  much  of  his  mother  for  that. 
He  was  the  youngest  of  the  family.  At  age 
of  10,  swallowed  a  halfpenny  ;  was  greatly 
scared.  Was  given  medicine,  but  the  half- 
penny has  never,  to  his  knowledge,  passed 
through  him.  Otherwise,  he  has  always 
enjoyed  life  before  marriage. 

Often  feels  paralysed  while  sleeping,  or  on 
waking  from  sleep  at  night.  Often,  too, 
starts,  as  if  falling  down  steps. 

Dream, — ''  He  seemed  to  be  chasing  a 
Persian  cat  on  a    ship.      Then  the  dream 


84     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

changed,  and  he  thought  he  was  returned 
home  and  found  his  two  children  in  a  filthy 
condition.  He  asked  his  wife  what  she 
had  been  doing  with  them.  She  replied  that 
she  had  been  away  and  that  they  had  been 
looked  after  by  his  mother.  He  replied 
that  he  could  not  believe  this,  since  the 
children  would  then  not  be  in  such  a  filthy 
state." 

Mother  the  only  friend  he  has  ever  had. 
He  was  the  youngest  of  ten  children,  and  her 
favourite. 

He  has  had  no  pleasure  (he  says)  for  five 
years,  and  cannot  see  any  prospect  of  pleasure 
in  the  uture.  Can't  sleep  at  all  at  night. 
Didn't  know  about  his  wife's  mental  weak- 
ness when  he  married  her.  He  knew,  how- 
ever, that  two  of  her  relatives  had  died  in  an 
asylum. 

Dreamt  he  was  getting  murdered,  blood 
coming  from  his  neck,  in  a  strange  house  and 
among  strange  people  (three  men).  Then 
dreamt  he  was  put  on  a  large  boat,  and  there 
were  thousands  and  thousands  of  rats  on 
the  boat.  He  seemed  to  be  the  only  man  on 
the  boat. 


HYSTERICAL    EPILEPSY,    WITH   DREAMS    85 

His  wife  drinks  a  great  deal.  This  is  his 
great  worry.  He  told  me  stories  about  her 
drinking  habits,  and  the  trouble  they  gave 
him. 

Oct,  \thy  191 5. — Two  nights  ago  dreamt 
that  he  was  at  home,  and  that  his  wife  had  a 
gash  in  her  throat,  blood  gushing  out.  The 
children  were  standing  round  crying.  He 
went  for  a  doctor.  The  doctor  said  :  ''I 
am  sorry  to  have  to  tell  you,  you  are  going  to 
lose  your  wife.''  Patient  said,  ''  For  God's 
sake,  don't  say  that  !  "  Patient  was  not 
greatly  distressed.  Then  two  policemen 
came  in,  and  patient  said,  **  What  do  you  men 
want  here  ?  "  They  said,  "  We  have  come  to 
arrest  you."  He  was  taken  to  the  police- 
station.  Later  on  he  was  sentenced  to 
death  by  hanging.  He  was  quite  innocent. 
When  sentence  was  passed  he  gave  one  big 
roar  and  sprang  up  in  bed  awake. 

He  has  only  once  dreamt  of  the  Darda- 
nelles, when  he  thought  he  was  in  a  bayonet 
charge. 

About  four  nights  ago  he  had  a  vision  of 
a  woman  in  a  black  shawl  (over  her  head) 
who  was  about  to  touch  him,  when  he  said. 


86     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

'*  Christ  have  mercy  on  me,"  and  the  vision 
then  vanished.  He  was  terrified.  It  was 
about  11.30  p.m.,  and  he  was  lying  in 
bed  awake.  He  was  powerless  to  move  or 
to  close  his  eyes  to  shut  out  the  sight. 

Oct,  Jth^  Oct.  loth, — Suggestion  treat- 
ment given.  Stage  of  inability  to  open 
eyes. 

Oct,  I'^thy  Dream, — ''  His  wife  came  here 
to  see  him,  bringing  her  two  children 
(5  years  and  2I  years),  and  stayed  with  his 
aunt.  He  murdered  the  two  children,  and 
then  attempted  to  murder  his  wife,  but  she 
resisted  and  struck  him  over  the  head  with  a 
hammer.'' 

Patient  told  this  dream  in  a  hypnoidal 
state,  and  went  on  to  confess  that  he  con- 
sidered that  it  was  only  his  wife's  death 
which  would  make  the  situation  tolerable, 
and  that  he  would  rather  his  children  died 
than  that  they  should  be  neglected  by  their 
mother. 

Oct,  i()th, — Wife  and  children  came  up 
and  stayed  near  the  hospital  for  a  fortnight. 
Patient  became  taciturn,  and  for  weeks  noth- 
ing could  be  got  from  him.     He  stubbornly 


HYSTERICAL   EPILEPSY,    WITH   DREAMS    87 

maintained  that  he  was  well  and  contented, 
although  looking  far  from  being  so. 

Nov,  loth, — After  repeated  questioning 
and  urging,  patient  spoke  about  his  affairs 
again.  He  still  worries  about  his  wife  and 
children,  and  says  that  if  only  his  children 
were  out  of  the  way  he  would  gladly  face 
death  in  any  form.  He  is  tired  of  life  be- 
cause this  constant  worry  about  his  children's 
future  spoils  all  his  pleasure. 

Patient's  father  died  (of  fatty  degeneration 
of  the  heart)  when  he  was  2  years  old. 
Patient  was  brought  up  by  his  mother  and 
had  a  happy  childhood.  He  only  reached 
Standard  IV  at  school.  He  married  his 
wife  because  a  baby  was  expected.  Other- 
wise he  would  not  have  married  her.  His 
first  child  was  born  two  days  after  the 
marriage. 

Both  his  brother  and  he  had  fits  when 
children. 

He  has  had  three  since  his  marriage,  as 
we  have  seen,  the  first  two  about  seven  months 
after  the  birth  of  each  of  his  two  children, 
respectively. 

Dec,  13M,  Dream, — **  He  was  at  home  and 


88     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

he  wanted  his  wife  and  children  to  come  out 
with  him  in  a  small  boat  for  a  sail  on  the 
Clyde.  But  at  first  he  went  to  his  mother's 
with  ^5  in  notes,  and  2s,  in  his  pocket.  He 
offered  his  mother  the  ^5,  but  she  would 
not  take  it.  She  asked  why  he  offered  it. 
He  replied  that  he  had  2^.,  which  would  be 
quite  enough  for  him.  She  coaxed  him  to 
take  back  the  ^5,  but  he  would  not.  So  he 
w^alked  away,  leaving  the  ^5  with  his  mother, 
and  went  with  his  wife  and  children  to  the 
boat  for  a  pleasure  trip. 

''They  pushed  off,  and  hadn't  been  ten 
minutes  in  the  boat  before  it  sank.  The 
water   seemed    to    be    a    bit    rough.     Then 

Geordie    G ,    the    boatman    who    takes 

dead  bodies  out  of  the  Clyde,  and  who  also 
rescues  people,  came  in  his  boat,  and  drew 
them  all  out  of  the  water.  He  took  them  into 
his  little  cabin,  and  sent  for  the  police  {not 
the  doctor).  The  police  took  patient's  name 
and  address,  and  asked  him  how  it  hap- 
pened, and  then  told  them  to  get  home  as 
quickly  as  possible.  Patient  reached  home 
with  his  family,  and  had  been  only  ten 
minutes  in  the  house  when  the  priest  and 


HYSTERICAL   EPILEPSY,    WITH   DREAMS    89 

doctor  came  in,  and  the  priest  asked  him  if 
he  had  led  a  good  life  and  had  attended  to  his 
duties,  and  he  said  '  Yes/  The  priest  also 
asked  him  when  he  had  to  go  back  to  his 
depot  (in  khaki)  and  he  replied,  '  In  three 
weeks'  time.'  So  the  priest  invited  him  to 
make  a  confession  (the  usual  monthly  con- 
fession, the  patient  explains),  but  the  patient 
replied  that  he  was  not  just  then  prepared  to 
make  one.  The  priest  then  asked  him  where 
his  mother  lived.  He  sent  for  the  patient's 
mother,  and  it  seemed  to  the  patient  that 
when  his  mother  came  in  she  just  made 
one  grab  for  him,  and  put  her  arms  round 
his  neck  and  kissed  him,  and  started  to 
cry.  So  the  patient  asked  her  what  she 
was  crying  for.  She  could  not  speak  for 
tears.  ...  A  little  later,  patient  thought 
he  saw  the  sky  opening  and  a  big  crucifix 
appear." 

Patient  keeps  saying  that  there  is  now  no 
sweetness  in  life.  He  cannot  see  what  there 
is  to  live  for. 

Dec,  1 6M,  Dream, — "  He  seemed  to  be 
dead  and  in  his  coffin,  but  could  see  every- 
thing that  was  going  on.     The  elder  of  his 


90     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

two  boys  (5  years  old)  came  over  and  kissed 
him,  but  he  could  not  move." 

The  patient  eventually  improved  in  bodily 
and  mental  health  through  autognosis,  sug- 
gestion and  auto-suggestion.  He  regained 
his  appetite  and  his  power  to  sleep,  but 
continued  to  be  far  from  happy.  He  had 
no  fits  while  in  hospital. 


CHAPTER  VII 
HYPNOSIS  AND   SUGGESTION 

We  have  now  to  consider  in  more  detail  the 
nature  of  hypnosis,  the  process  of  hypnotism, 
the  nature  of  suggestion,  and  the  relation 
between  hypnosis  and  suggestion.  Begin- 
ning with  hypnosis — historically  the  practice 
of  hypnotism  preceded  the  theory  and 
practice  of  suggestion,  and  the  historical 
order  throws  light  upon  the  scientific  rela- 
tionship. 

Hypnosis 

The  word  hypnosis  was  invented  by  Braid, 
to  describe  a  state  of  mind  and  body  into 
which  some  patients  are  thrown  by  certain 
special  methods  ;  this  state  very  closely 
resembles  a  state  of  sleep,  and  had  been 
produced  years  before  by  Mesmer.  Certain 
phenomena  and  characteristics  of  the  mind 
and  nervous  system  first  observed   in   mes- 

91 


92     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

merism  were  later  described  under  the  title 
Hypnotism  and  later  still  under  that  of  Sug- 
gestion. The  events  of  recent  years  have 
enabled  us  to  approach  the  subject  again  in  an 
unbiassed  way,  and  to  a  certain  extent  inde- 
pendently of  earlier  literature.  After  the 
work  of  Mesmer  and  people  like  Braid, 
Elliotson,  and  Esdaile,  there  grew  up  a  ten- 
dency for  writers  who  had  no  great  practical 
experience  to  copy  from  one  book  to  another 
statements  concerning  the  laws  of  hypnosis 
without  any  close  scrutiny  or  testing  of  those 
laws.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  War  the  number 
of  typical  hypnotic  patients  that  any  single 
medical  man  had  the  opportunity  of  seeing 
was  comparatively  small  ;  thus  there  was  a 
distinct  tendency  for  his  views  to  be  biassed 
by  his  own  findings,  and  for  his  theory  to 
be  supplemented  by  statements  that  he 
found  in  books. 

The  large  number  of  nerve  cases  produced 
by  the  War  gave  material  of  unrivalled  excel- 
lence for  the  study  of  the  phenomena  of 
hypnosis,  and  some  of  us  very  quickly 
found  that  our  practical  experience  was  to 
a  great  extent  at  variance  with  what  we  had 


HYPNOSIS  AND  SUGGESTION  93 

read.  Moreover,  the  writers  were  at  variance 
on  fundamental  matters,  some  holding  that 
the  more  normal  the  person,  the  stronger  his 
will,  the  greater  his  powers  of  concentration, 
the  more  easily  was  he  hypnotized — i.e. 
that  hypnotizability  was  a  sign  of  mental 
health — whilst  others  stated  that  the  more 
normal  the  person,  the  less  susceptible  he 
was  to  hypnotic  influence.  Nor  was  it 
evident  what  types  of  the  weak-minded  had 
been  dealt  with  in  the  experiments. 

We  found  that  in  cases  of  shell-shock  the 
patients  were  easily  hypnotized  immediately 
after  the  shock.  Moreover,  the  more  defi- 
nitely dissociated  they  were  and  the  greater 
the  extent  of  the  amnesia,  the  more  easily 
were  they  hypnotized.  On  the  other  hand, 
patients  who  showed  no  loss  of  memory 
were  not  easily  hypnotized  ;  I  do  not  say 
they  were  not  hypnotizable,  but  mild  methods 
failed  to  produce  the  hypnotic  sleep. 

Methods  of  producing  Hypnosis 

We  may  here  conveniently  consider  the 
various  methods  used  in  producing  hypnosis. 


94     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

Generally  speaking,  the  monotonous  stimu- 
lation of  sense  organs  tends  to  produce 
hypnosis — to  throw  the  patient  into  a  state 
that  resembles  sleep.  The  patient  lies  on  a 
couch  and  fixates,  say,  an  ophthalmoscope 
mirror  or  a  faceted  diamond  held  about  ten 
inches  from  the  eyes  and  slightly  above  the 
normal  plane  of  vision,  so  that  to  fixate  it 
he  must  turn  his  eyes  upwards  and  inwards  to 
the  bright  object.  After  a  few  minutes' 
fixation  he  will,  if  he  is  a  satisfactory  subject, 
experience  more  and  more  difficulty  in  keep- 
ing his  eyes  open,  and  will  pass  into  the 
hypnotic  state.  Suggestions  may  be  given 
to  him  that  he  will  get  drowsy  and  that  he  is 
going  to  sleep,  with  the  result  that  he  falls 
into  an  artificial  sleep,  but  continues  to  hear 
the  words  of  the  operator,  and  later  may  lose 
consciousness  of  everything  else.  This  is  a 
deep  stage  :  he  is  apparently  asleep  to  every- 
thing except  the  physician's  words.  Lighter 
stages  can  be  produced,  where  he  is  conscious 
of  what  other  people  say  or  conscious  of 
voices  around  him,  but  where,  nevertheless, 
his  mind  is  concentrated  upon  the  physician's 
words.     He  has  no  great  power  to  move  his 


HYPNOSIS  AND  SUGGESTION  95 

attention  from  one  thing  to  another.  It  is 
fixed  upon  the  words  of  the  physician. 

The  bright  object  may  be  replaced  by  a 
monotonous  sound.  A  metronome  beating 
at  two  a  second  is  very  useful.  The  patient 
lies  listening  to  the  beat  of  the  metronome, 
and  gradually  falls  into  a  state  of  dissociation. 
Another  means  of  producing  sleepiness  is  the 
use  of  monotonous  rhythmical  passes  with  or 
without  contact.  We  may  smooth  the  fore- 
head at  a  definite  slow  rate,  or  again  we  may 
make  passes  down  the  subject's  body  without 
touching  the  body  at  all.  This  method,  of 
passes  without  contact,  was  much  used  by 
Mesmer,  and  seems  to  have  a  peculiar  eff'ect 
in  certain  cases.  Ihave  met  with  patients 
who  resisted  other  methods  but  were  readily 
hypnotized  by  this  method. 

These  are  the  more  fundamental  ways  of 
producing  hypnosis,  and  it  seems  unnecessary 
here  to  refer  to  others,  as  they  have  no  special 
theoretical  significance.  We  may  sum  up  by 
stating  that  all  recognized  methods  of  pro- 
ducing hypnosis  are  methods  of  holding 
the  attention,  and  so  bringing  about  dis- 
sociation. 


96     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

To  return  to  the  war  neuroses :  when 
dealing  with  shell-shocked  soldiers  of  hys- 
terical type,  all  that  was  needed  was  to  tell 
them  with  conviction  that  they  would  go 
to  sleep  but  would  continue  to  hear  what 
was  said  to  them  by  the  physician.  They 
at  once  passed  into  a  sleep,  and  we  could 
secure  hypnotic  phenomena  in  varying  degree 
from  them  afterwards.  The  depth  of  hyp- 
nosis exhibited  varied  directly  with  the 
degree  of  dissociation  already  existing  when 
the  patient  reached  the  physician.  The 
men  had  already  become  dissociated  through 
inability  to  deal  adequately  with  the  intense 
emotional  strain  produced  by  the  shock  ; 
they  were,  in  fact,  already  hypnotized. 
Moreover,  we  discovered  upon  reassociat- 
ing  their  minds  after  a  single  hypnosis 
that  they  had  thereby  been  rendered  less 
susceptible  to  hypnosis — and  this  not  because 
they  were  resisting,  for  they  were  only  too 
anxious  to  proceed  with  the  treatment,  but 
because  they  had  acquired  a  greater  strength 
of  mind,  a  greater  unity  of  consciousness, 
which  rendered  the  appeal  of  the  hypnotist 
less   effective.     Reassociation   of  the  mind, 


HYPNOSIS  AND  SUGGESTION  97 

rather  than  increased  power  of  voluntary 
resistance,  was  the  determining  factor  in 
this  loss  of  susceptibility. 

Susceptibility  to  Hypnosis 

If  we  admit  that  patients  who  are  easily 
hypnotized  are  definitely  abnormal,  and 
that  hypnotizability  and  this  form  of  abnor- 
mality go  hand  in  hand,  it  would  appear 
that  the  perfectly  normal  person  should  be 
unsusceptible  to  hypnosis.  Yet  we  know  that 
a  certain  proportion  of  apparently  normal 
people  can  be  hypnotized.  Are  we,  there- 
fore, to  say  that  hypnotism  itself  is  a  normal 
property  characteristic  of  a  certain  propor- 
tion of  normal  people,  and  that  the  hypnosis 
of  which  we  have  been  speaking — the  hypno- 
sis of  the  shell-shocked  soldier — is  something 
different  ?  That  is  one  alternative.  The 
other  is  that  hypnosis  is  always  the  same 
whether  light  or  deep,  that  dissociation  is 
always  conditioned  by  emotional  incompati- 
bility, and  that  these  apparently  normal 
people,  who  are  hypnotizable  to  a  slight 
degree,    are    to    that    degree    abnormal.     I 


98       SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

hold  the  second  view.  No  one  is  completely 
normal.  We  are  all  abnormal  in  some 
respect.  We  may  agree  with  Mcebius  that 
"  everyone  is  somewhat  hysterical."  We 
are  none  of  us  complete  units.  There  is  a 
constant  tendency  for  certain  of  our  emo- 
tional trends  to  break  away  from  the  rest,  a 
tendency  for  each  of  us  to  attend  to  the  outer 
world  not  as  an  integrated  personality,  but 
with  one  of  the  aspects  of  his  personality. 
As  William  James  pointed  out,  each  is  a 
system  of  many  selves.  No  one  is  a  com- 
pletely unitary  system  of  such  selves.  We 
have  various  desires  which,  while  compatible 
with  one  of  the  selves,  are  incompatible  with 
others  ;  we  try  to  make  them  compatible 
with  all  under  the  guidance  of  our  dominant 
personality,  but  we  never  completely  succeed. 
Unity  of  personality  is  an  ideal  rather  than 
a  fact  ;  but  some  persons  are  born  with  a 
greater  tendency  towards  dissociation.  These 
suffer  from  hysteria  or  the  effects  of  mental 
strain  ;  they  are  easily  hypnotizable,  and 
I  claim  that  their  hypnotizability  is  a 
pathological  characteristic,  not  a  normal 
characteristic.     In  reaching  this  conclusion. 


HYPNOSIS  AND  SUGGESTION  99 

I  am  inferring  according  to  the  principle  of 
concomitant  variations. 

We  conclude  that  the  hypnotic  state  is  a 
state  of  dissociation,  while  the  ideal  normal 
state  is  a  state  of  association.  It  follows  that 
hypnosis,  as  suchy  is  not  a  good  thing  for 
the  patient.  Consider  an  abstract  case  of  an 
individual  who  is  practically  normal  and 
under  ordinary  circumstances  not  hypnotiz- 
able  ;  suppose  that  that  person  is  subjected  to 
an  emotional  appeal  to  one  of  his  many  selves, 
to  the  exclusion  of  the  others.  It  may 
happen  that  that  self  or  tendency  breaks 
away  from  the  other  tendencies  of  his  mind. 
A  dissociation  is  started,  and  he  at  once 
becomes  hypnotized  because  he  is  dissociated. 
The  apparently  normal  mind  was  not  an 
absolute  unity  ;  in  it  there  was  a  slight 
tendency  to  dissociation.  The  emotional 
appeal  increased  that  tendency  and  the 
patient  became  hypnotizable.  Under  hyp- 
nosis the  dissociation  increases,  the  patient 
becomes  more  hypnotizable,  and  so  the 
situation  gets  worse  and  worse.  Turn,  then, 
to  our  experience  of  patients  who  have 
been  repeatedly  hypnotized.     The  so-called 


100  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

"  circus  horse  "  subjects  of  the  Salpetriere 
became  more  and  more  weakly,  less  and 
less  able  to  manage  their  own  affairs.  The 
repeated  hypnosis  did  them  no  good. 
Quite  lately  a  book  has  been  published 
in  France  giving  the  life  of  a  lady  who 
seemed  to  have  clairvoyant  powers,  and 
who  was  hypnotized  repeatedly  and  to  a 
high  degree  some  twenty  or  thirty  years 
ago.  She  has  become  less  and  less  able  to 
look  after  herself.  I  myself  have  seen 
several  patients  who  have  been  hypno- 
tized many  times  by  different  doctors, 
and  my  experience  certainly  is  that  they 
became  less  able  to  look  after  themselves. 
The  general  effect  of  repeated  hypnosis 
is  definitely  bad  for  the  subject.  It  is 
most  important  to  think  clearly  about 
this.  If  you  agree  that  hypnosis  corre- 
sponds with  dissociation,  you  will  at  once 
agree  also  that  it  is  in  itself  bad  for  the 
subject.  Nevertheless,  as  we  have  seen  in 
Chapter  IV,  its  employment  is  useful  and 
justifiable  in  the  treatment  of  certain  types 
of  patients. 


HYPNOSIS  AND  SUGGESTION  loi 


Relation  of  Hypnosis  to  Suggestion 

As  regards  the  relation  of  hypnosis  to 
suggestion,  the  various  methods  that  I  have 
described  of  producing  hypnosis  seem  to  be 
methods  of  inducing  sleep  by  suggestion, 
but  they  are  not  all  methods  of  that  nature. 
Consider  shell-shocked  men.  The  patients 
are  already  hypnotized — they  are  in  the 
same  mental  state  as  other  hypnotized  persons 
— except  that  they  are  not  en  rapport  with 
a  hypnotist.  All  that  is  necessary  is  for  the 
doctor  to  get  en  rapport  with  such  a  patient, 
and  all  the  ordinary  phenomena  of  hypno- 
tism can  then  be  obtained.  Even  if  we 
admit  that  for  the  most  part  hypnosis  is 
produced  by  suggestion  of  sleep,  the  effects 
obtained  in  cases  that  are  deeply  hypnotized 
can  scarcely  be  accounted  for  as  results  of 
suggestion.  Some  cases  pass  into  deep  hyp- 
nosis at  once,  and  many  of  the  phenomena 
then  observed  are  phenomena  relatively 
independent  of  suggestion.  For  example, 
the  patient  when  he  is  deeply  hypnotized  may 
be  found  to  have  a  much  wider  memory,  a 
memory   for   a   much   larger   extent   of  his 


10?     SUGOESTTDN  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 


past  life  than  he  had  before.  Or  take  a 
patient  with  loss  of  memory  ;  we  can  easily 
hypnotize  him  and  often  find  that  his  lost 
memories  come  up,  although  he  has  been 
given  no  suggestion  whatever  with  regard 
to  these  lost  memories.  In  other  cases  it  is 
true  that  you  have  to  suggest  that  the  memo- 
ries will  come  back,  but  here  again  it  is 
difficult  to  plead  that  the  recall  of  the  memory 
is  entirely  the  effect  of  suggestion. 

It  would  seem  that  there  are  two  distinct 
characteristics  present.  There  is  hypnosis, 
which  is  a  form  of  dissociation,  and  there  is 
an  increased  suggestibility,  and  the  suggesti- 
bility and  depth  of  hypnosis  do  not  vary 
concomitantly.  They  may  vary  in  propor- 
tion to  one  another  in  the  lighter  stages  of 
hypnosis,  but  with  a  more  pronounced 
degree  of  hypnosis  there  is  sometimes  loss 
rather  than  gain  of  suggestibility.  In  many 
directions  the  deeply  hypnotized  patient  is 
not  suggestible  at  all  ;  he  has  passed 
beyond  your  powers  of  suggestion.  His 
power  of  response  is  more  selective.  What 
has  really  happened  is  that  you  have  split 
off  one  small  part  of  his  mind  ;    the  rest  of 


HYPNOSIS  AND  SUGGESTION  103 

the  mind  is  dissociated  from  this  small  part 
and  immune  to  hetero-suggestion/  The 
result  is  that  after  waking  the  patient  up 
the  immediate  effects  seem  to  be  good. 
The  suggestion  has  taken  root,  but  only  in  a 
small  portion  of  a  dissociated  personality, 
and  quickly  wears  off.  It  would  seem  that 
the  distinction  between  suggestion  and  hyp- 
nosis is  such  that  you  can  practically  separate 
suggestion  and  hypnosis  as  methods  of  deal- 
ing with  patients.  Hypnosis  is  a  valuable 
method  of  dealing  with  loss  of  memory,  of 
dealing  with  dissociation  already  produced 
by  other  causes,  for  you  can  use  it  once  to 
recover  the  lost  memory  and  then  reassociate 
the  patient.  By  so  doing  you  make  him  a 
more  normal  man. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  using  hypnosis 
merely  as  a  means  of  increasing  suggestibility, 
you  take  away  with  one  hand  what  you  give 

1  Hetero-suggestion  =  suggestion  implanted  in  a  patient  by 
another  person.  Auto-suggestion  =  a  suggestion  implanted  in 
a  patient  hy  himself.  In  so  far  as  all  forms  of  suggestion  must 
be  accepted  by  the  patient  himself  in  order  to  take  effect,  all 
suggestion  may  be  called  auto-suggestion.  But  this  wider  use 
of  the  latter  term  slurs  over  a  distinction  that  is  of  great  im- 
portance in  practice. 


104    SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

with  the  other.  You  perhaps  increase  the 
tendency  of  the  suggestion  to  take  tem- 
porary effect,  but  you  also  diminish  the 
coherence  of  the  patient's  mind,  so  that  he 
becomes  more  susceptible  to  bad  as  well  as 
to  good  suggestion,  and  his  last  state  is 
worse  than  his  first. 

Nevertheless,  in  special  cases  the  increased 
suggestibility  accompanying  a  light  hypnotic 
(or  hypnoidal)  state  may  be  of  great  value 
in  treatment.  As  an  instance  one  may  cite 
the  treatment  of  backward  children  by  this 
means. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SUGGESTION  WITHOUT  HYPNOSIS 

Is  it  possible  to  employ  suggestion  without 
hypnosis  ?  I  am  inclined  to  believe  it 
possible,  although  perhaps  most  people  would 
describe  such  cases  as  cases  of  very  light 
hypnosis.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  dissocia- 
tion of  the  mind  of  a  normal  person  falling 
asleep  in  the  ordinary  way  is  itself  a  normal 
dissociation,  different  in  value  from  the 
dissociation  of  hysteria  and  hypnosis,  and 
that  production  of  this  normal  dissociation 
suffices  in  order  to  apply  suggestion  to  the 
patient.  In  sleep  it  w^ould  seem  that  the 
so-called  higher  mental  functions,  those  asso- 
ciated with  the  cerebral  cortex,  are  disso- 
ciated as  a  whole  from  the  so-called  lower 
unconscious  functions,  whereas  in  hysteria 
and  hypnosis  the  dissociation  is  within  the 
realm  of  the  higher  functions.  They  are 
no  longer  a  unity. 

105 


io6    SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

Definition  of  Suggestion 

I  have  not  yet  definedsuggestion.  F.W.H. 
Myers  defined  it  as  ''  a  successful  appeal  to 
the  subliminal,"  C.  Baudouin  as  ''  the  sub- 
conscious realization  of  an  idea."  This 
second  definition  will  serve  our  purpose  ; 
it  involves  a  subconscious,  the  possibility 
of  acceptance  of  an  idea  by  that  subconscious, 
and  the  realization  of  the  idea  by  subcon- 
scious mental  activity,  a  certain  latent  period 
elapsing  between  the  acceptance  and  the 
realization  of  the  suggestion.  There  is  a 
great  deal  of  evidence  for  the  view  that  in 
normal  sleep  the  subconscious  in  its  entirety 
is  more  easily  approachable.  The  conscious 
mind  that  has  dominated  it  during  the  day 
is  losing  its  hold  and  sinking  more  and  more 
into  abeyance.  In  this  situation  ideas  that 
are  presented  to  the  subconscious  have 
a  greater  chance  of  making  an  impression 
on  the  subconscious  and  being  accepted  by 
the  subconscious.  When  this  happens  the 
subconscious  proceeds  to  realize  the  idea. 

It  has  been  proposed  ^  to  compare  the  rela- 

1  By  C.  Baudouin :    Suggestion  and  Juto-suggcstion, 


SUGGESTION  WITHOUT  HYPNOSIS        107 

tion  of  the  conscious  to  the  subconscious 
with  the  relation  of  external  to  internal. 
The  mind  has  developed  in  relation  to  an 
external  environment  which  it  has  had  to 
learn  to  know  and  act  upon.  In  that  process 
it  has  become  conscious  intellect  and  con- 
scious will.  But  the  affairs  of  the  body  itself 
have  to  be  carried  on  ;  a  certain  portion  of 
the  mind  presides  over  these  bodily  functions, 
even  over  the  cerebral  cortex  which  is  sup- 
posed to  be  in  the  most  intimate  relation  to 
conscious  mental  activity.  This  part  is  the 
subconscious  mind  and  has  as  its  main 
characteristic  a  sensitivity  to  suggestion, 
even  as  will  is  the  active  characteristic  of  the 
conscious  mind.  If  you  wish  to  bring  about 
a  change  in  the  subconscious  attitude  towards 
the  environment,  will  is  ineffective  because 
the  material,  for  dealing  with  which  it  has 
been  evolved,  is  quite  different  in  nature 
from  the  subconscious.  The  subconscious 
is  susceptible  to  the  reception  of  ideas  in 
a  passive  way,  and  is  able  to  realize  those 
ideas  in  its  own  manner  and  produce  changes 
in  the  body.  Among  these  changes  we 
may  assume  that  it  can  produce  changes  in 


io8     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

the  cerebral  cortex,  that  it  may  the  more 
easily  produce  changes  in  parts  of  the  body 
that  are  related  to  the  nervous  system.  '^  "^ 

This  is  one  possibility.  /  am  not  exactly 
advocating  it  ;  the  evidefice  is  not  sufficient^ 
and  it  may  seem  rather  too  extraordinary 
to  fit  in  with  accepted  results  of  research  in 
neurology,  biology,  and  physiology.  What 
we  are  compelled  to  accept,  however,  are 
the  facts  themselves.  We  do  find  situations 
where  the  will  is  apparently  powerless  and 
the  intellect  useless,  yet  where  suggestion  at 
once  succeeds  in  producing  eff^ects  if  the 
patient  can  but  get  into  a  half-waking, 
half-sleeping  passive  state  of  mind.  Under 
these  conditions  calm  and  impressive  sugges- 
tion does  not  stir  up  opposition.  The  ideas 
suggested  tend  to  realize  themselves,  results 
are  obtained  and  subsequently — what  is  still 
more  important — the  patient  finds  he  is 
able  to  use  the  method  himself.  He  is 
able  to  put  his  mind  in  a  condition  in  which 
conscious  mind  ceases  to  strive  and  allows 
the  subconscious  to  assume  control.  Unlike 
volitional  concentration  of  the  attention,  the 
concentration   obtained    in   successful   auto- 


SUGGESTION  WITHOUT  HYPNOSIS        109 

suggestion  is  free  from  strain.  Not  only  are 
the  voluntary  muscles  relaxed  ;  all  conscious 
mental  process  is  also  relaxed,  and  the  patient 
is  able  himself  to  call  up  the  idea  of  the  desired 
end  quietly,  without  definitely  speaking  the 
words,  and  in  calling  up  these  thoughts  of 
complete  recovery  or  thoughts  of  improve- 
ment he  has  the  mental  attitude  of  complete 
certainty.  He  knows  that  his  thoughts  are 
coming  true.  He  knows  that  the  suggestion 
will  realize  itself.  He  knows  that  during 
sleep  the  subconscious  will  realize  the  idea 
more  and  more  fully.  Under  these  condi- 
tions ideas  presented  to  the  patient  by  himself 
do  tend  to  realize  themselves. 

The  Normal  State  of  Increased 
Suggestibility 

What  is  this  state  of .  mind  in  which  the 
power  of  suggestion  increases  ?  Many  would 
say  it  is  a  state  of  light  hypnosis,  but,  in 
my  view,  it  is  a  normal  state.  It  is  a  state 
that  perfectly  normal  persons  pass  through  as 
they  lose  consciousness  in  sleep  ;  moreover, 
it  is  a  state  that  has  no  bad  effects.  From 
"experience  I  conclude  there  is  no  pathological 


no     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

dissociation  in  this  state.  You  can  limit^ 
the  range  of  conscious  activity,  get  an  in- 
creased suggestibility  for  the  moment,  and 
then,  when  the  patient  returns  to  the  normal 
state,  he  is  found  to  be  no  more  susceptible 
than  heretofore  to  hetero-suggestion.  In 
this  it  differs  from  hypnosis.  A  person 
who  has  been  hypnotized  is  more  susceptible. 
An  impression  may  be  obtained  from  some 
writings  that  the  longer  the  periods  during 
w^hich  auto-suggestion  is  practised,  the  better 
the  effect.  It  is,  however,  much  better  in 
using  auto-suggestion  to  get  the  state  of 
mind  for  a  very  short  time,  for  a  minute  or 
less,  and  not  to  attempt  to  keep  this  frame  of 
mind  for  a  longer  time.  The  reason  for  this 
is  that  a  short  interval  of  time  suffices  to 
secure  the  state  of  mind,  to  establish  contact 
with  the  subconscious  and  to  implant  the  idea 
of  the  desired  end.  The  subconscious  then, 
without  further  assistance  from  consciousness, 
goes  on  to  realize  the  idea  at  its  own  leisure. 
In  this  way  you  take  advantage  of  a  normal 
suggestibility  and  are  free  from  any  danger. 
But  if  you  try  to  prolong  the  state  for  several 
minutes,  you  run  the  risk  of  your  own  sub- 


SUGGESTION  WITi^OUT  HYPNOSIS        in 

conscious  throwing  up  an  opposite  suggestion. 
Patients  who  suffer  from  depression  have 
themselves  told  me  that,  although  the  sug- 
gestion may  seem  to  work  when  they  get 
treatment  from  me,  when  they  seek  to  suggest 
to  themselves,  all  the  time  a  small  voice  is 
negating  the  idea  they  are  striving  to  implant. 
This  opposition  is  sometimes  of  more  effect 
than  the  auto-suggestion,  and  the  patient 
becomes  worse  rather  than  better.  In  such 
circumstances,  if  you  shorten  the  time  spent  ] 
in  auto-suggestion,  you  secure  a  better  result. 

The  *'  Law  of  Reversed  Effort  " 

M.  Cou^,  of  the  New  Nancy  School,  has 
sought  to  summarize  the  facts  in  his  so-called 
law  of  reversed  effort.  He  has  stated  it  in 
this  way  :  ( i )  when  the  will  and  imagination 
are  in  conflict  the  imagination  always  wins  ; 
(2)  in  conflict  between  will  and  imagination 
the  imagination  varies  in  direct  ratio  to  the 
square  of  the  will.  He  is  using  the  terms 
will  and  imagination  in  no  clearly  defined 
sense,  but,  put  roughly,  he  pictures  a  struggle 
between  the  active  and  conscious  striving  of 
the  will  and  imagination  in  the  shape  of  a 


112     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

suggestion  that,  having  been  accepted  by  the 
subconscious,  tends  to  realize  itself  through 
subconscious  mental  activity.  He  observed 
that  over-anxiety  counteracts  the  effects  of 
suggestion.  Take  an  ordinary  experience  on 
peeking  to  sleep.  If  you  are  anxious  to  go 
to  sleep,  you  get  wider  and  wider  awake. 
Or,  again,  take  a  case  of  temporary  loss  of 
memory.  If  you  make  a  greater  and  greater 
effort  of  wdll  to  recover  the  memory,  you 
really  seem  to  drive  it  farther  and  farther 
away,  but  when  you  change  your  mental 
attitude  to  a  state  of  passive  waitiBg,  the  lost 
memory  will  often  come  up.  \/You  have 
freed  yourself  from  effort  and  so  created  the 
conditions  under  which  the  subconscious 
works  and  gives  results. 

Is  this  law  of  reversed  effort  the  best  way 
of  formulating  the  doctrine  ?  If  it  is  we  are 
faced  wdth  a  rather  serious  situation,  for  it 
tends  to  discount  the  will.  It  makes  sug- 
gestion something  absolutely  different  from 
the  wdll,  and  puts  the  will  in  a  definitely 
inferior  position  as  regards  these  different 
forms  of  nerve  illness  and  as  regards  ordi- 
nary   life.     Are    we    forced    to    adopt    this 


SUGGESTION  WITHOUT  HYPNOSIS        113 

position  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  we  are  not. 
The  facts  are  true,  and  have  long  been  recog- 
nized. It  is  the  point  of  view  that  Coue 
emphasizes  in  his  law  that  I  would  criticize. 
Let  us  consider  how  the  will  and  imagination 
do  come  into  conflict  with  one  another. 
Supposing  you  are  anxious  to  remember  a 
name,  you  make  an  effort  of  will  and  find 
the  name  disappears.  Then  you  adopt  the 
attitude  of  auto-suggestion  and  the  name 
comes  up  once  more.  Perhaps  you  want  to 
introduce  the  person  to  another  friend  of 
yours  and  you  want  to  avoid  appearing 
foolish,  but  the  name  will  not  come.  You 
make  an  effort  of  will  to  secure  it,  but  your 
effort  oj  will  is  a  special  kind  oj  will^^  a  rather 
weak^  Jitjul  jorm  oj  will^  because  it  carries 
with  it  J  ear  oj  jailure.  Just  as  a  weak 
swimmer,  suddenly  seized  with  fear,  strikes 
out  irregularly  and  rapidly  and  sinks,  so 
your  will  under  the  influence  of  fear 
becomes  a  spasmodic  useless  will  that  must 
be  abandoned  before  the  lost  memory  will 
float  up.  I  The  fear  of  failure  is  a  very 
prominent  part  of  your  total  mental  state. 

1  Indeed,  not  complete  will  at  all ;      see  next  chapter. 


114     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

Inability  to  remember  the  name  arouses 
fear  of  a  continued  inability  to  recover  it. 
This  added  emotion  wins  the  day  and  your 
spasmodic  will  is  vanquished.  Really,  how- 
ever, the  conflict  is  not  between  your  will 
and  the  suggestion,  but  between  one  sugges- 
tion and  another  ;  the  suggestion  or  idea 
that  the  name  will  come  to  you  and  the 
suggested  opposite.  By  willing  in  that 
spasmodic  way  you  have  produced  the  coun- 
ter-suggestion. This  is  reinforced  by  the 
emotion  of  fear,  and  makes  your  will  the 
kind  of  will  that  is  inferior  to  suggestion. 
The  complete  form  of  will  is  never  in  conflict 
with  suggestion.  This  will  works,  not 
through  an  effort  of  determination,  but  with 
a  calm  assumption  that,  of  course,  it  is  going 
to  succeed.  This  kind  of  will  is  not  inferior 
to  suggestion.  In  dealing  with  patients  we 
find  that,  if  the  law  of  reversed  effort  is 
explained  to  mean  that  entire  passivity  will 
secure  a  certain  result,  there  is  often  improve- 
ment at  first,  but  the  patients  are  mystified 
and  find  that  eventually  they  have  to  use  their 
wills  in  one  form  or  another.  It  becomes 
necessary  to  explain  that  spasmodic,  impul- 


SUGGESTION  WITHOUT  HYPNOSIS       115 

sive  will  is  not  an  expression  of  the  full 
personality,  that  what  they  should  cultivate 
is  a  will  based  upon  a  quiet,  calm,  firm  belief 
in  the  reality  of  health  and  the  innate 
tendency  of  body  and  mind  towards  health. 
Such  a  form  of  will  is  not  in  opposition  in 
any  way  to  suggestion  for  their  good  ;  in 
fact,  their  individual  suggestions  are  merely 
aspects  or  parts  of  that  will.  Hence  I  can- 
not help  feeling  some  doubt  about  this 
formulation  of  the  law  of  reversed  effort. 
One  must  avoid  strain  in  carrying  out  hetero- 
suggestion  or  auto-suggestion,  but  it  is  a 
dangerous  doctrine  to  say  that  one  must 
avoid  will.  Obviously  one  must  avoid 
spasmodic  will,  but  one  ..needs  the  steady 
determination  to  retain  a  real  belief  in  the 
power  within  that  w^orks  towards  full  health 
of  body  and  mind.  One  must  will  to  be 
well,  one's  efforts  of  will  being  of  the  nature 
of  a  studied  resolution  coupled  with  a  set 
calm  faith  that  we  are  in  harmony  with, 
and  not  unimportant  parts  of,  a  much  wider 
spiritual  system. 

^  The  forgetting  of  names  is  sometimes  (not  always)  due 
to  repression,  as  Freud  was  the  first  to  point  out.  In  such 
cases  the  passive  attitude  of  mind  helps  to  remove  the  re- 
pression. But  in  these,  as  in  other,  cases  the  mental  factors 
described  above  are  also  active. 


CHAPTER   IX 

SUGGESTION,    AUTO-SUGGESTION, 
AND   MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

Theory  and   Practice  of  M.   Coue 

In  the  previous  chapter  we  have  had  occa- 
sion to  criticize  M.  Coue's  formulation  of 
his  ''  Law  of  Reversed  Effort."  In  doing 
so  we  do  not  for  a  moment  dispute  thtjacts 
upon  which  the  law  is  supposed  to  be  based. 
Indeed,  these  facts  have  long  been  recognized 
by  all  who  practise  suggestion  treatment. 
In  carrying  out  suggestion  treatment  all 
effort  should  be  avoided.  Suggestion  and 
auto-suggestion  should  be  employed  to  sup- 
plement the  will,  not  to  supplant  it. 

But  the  possible  conflict  of  which  Coue 
speaks  is  one  between  opposing  suggestions, 
in  which  a  complete  act  of  wdll  never  figures. 
One  of  the  best  definitions  of  volition  is  that 
given  by  G.  F.  Stout :  ''  Volition  is  a  desire 
qualified  and  defined  by  the  judgment  that, 

116 


I 


THE    PRACTICE    OF    SUGGESTION        117 

so  far  as  in  us  lies,  we  shall  bring  about  the 
desired  end  because  we  desire  it."  The 
*' judgment  "  in  this  definition  comprises, 
of  course,  bel'tej^  and  if  completed  it  is 
superior  to  imagination  acting  alone.  Fear, 
doubt,  or  uncertainty  prevents  the  occur- 
rence of  completed  volition.  Coue  himself 
sums  up  the  situation  in  his  phrase,  "Je 
voudrais  bien  mais  je  ne  peux  pas."  Here 
the  voudrais  cannot  be  equated  with  volonte 
or  volition.  It  represents  a  wish^  a  very 
different  state  of  mind.  As  Aristotle  re- 
minded us  2,000  years  ago,  we  can  wish  the 
impossible  but  we  cannot  will  it.  We  must 
believe  a  thing  possible  before  we  can  will  it 
at  all. 

Coue  is  equally  unsatisfactory  in  his 
definition  of  imagination.  He  identifies 
it  with  the  unconscious,  in  the  following 
passage  of  La  Mattrise  de  Soi-Memey  p.  3  : 

''  Non  seulement  I'inconscient  preside  aux 
fonctions  de  notre  organisme,  m.ais  il  pre- 
side aussi  a  Taccomplissement  de  toutes  nos 
actions,  quelles  qu'elles  soient. 

"  C'est  lui  que  nous  appelons  imagination 
et  qui,  contrairement    a  ce  qui  est   admis, 


ii8      SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

nous  fait  toujours  agir,  meme  et  surtout 
centre  notre  volonte,  lorsqu'il  y  a  an- 
tagonisme  entre  ces  deux  forces." 

But  if  we  then  turn  to  what  he  has  to  tell 
us  about  this  '*  unconscious  "  we  find  no 
adequate  definition  of  it.  Nor  is  this  sur- 
prising, since  he  has  no  theoretical  or  practi- 
cal acquaintance  with  the  analytic  investiga- 
tions into  the  nature  of  the  subconscious  or 
unconscious. 

On  the  practical  side,  one  may  criticize 
Coue's  method  in  that  it  involves  an  en- 
couragement and  training  of  the  patient's 
automatism  and  produces  a  dissociation  which 
is  similar  in  kind  to  the  dissociation  of 
hypnosis  and  of  hysteria.  This  is  especially 
obvious  in  the  last  of  his  four  experiences^  or 
preliminary  experiments  which  patients  are 
put  through  in  the  course  of  learning  auto- 
suggestion. His  description  is  as  follows  : 
Quatrieme  experience, — Prier  le  sujet  de 
croiser  les  mains  et  de  serrer  les  doigts  au 
maximum,  c'est-a-dire  jusqu'a  ce  qu'il  se 
produise  un  leger  tremblement,  le  regarder 
comme  dans  Texperience  precedente  [i.e. 
le  regarder  fixement,  sans  remuer  les  pau- 


THE    PRACTICE    OF    SUGGESTION        119 

pieres,  a  la  racine  du  nez]  et  tenir  ses  mains 
sur  les  siennes,  en  pressant  legerement  celles- 
ci,  comme  pour  les  serrer  plus  fortement. 
Lui  dire  de  penser  qu'il  ne  peut  plus  desserrer 
les  doigts,  que  vous  allez  compter  jusqu'^ 
trois  et  que,  quand  vous  direz  :  '  Trois,'  il 
devra  essayer  de  separer  ses  mains,  en  pensant 
toujours :  '  Je  ne  peux  pas,  je  ne  peux  pas, 
etc/,  il  constatera  que  cela  lui  est  impossible. 
Compter  alors,  '  un,  deux,  trois,'  tres  lente- 
ment,  et  ajouter  immediatement,  en  detach- 
ant  les  syllabes  :  '  Vous-ne-pou-vez-pas,  vous- 
ne-pou-vez-pas,  etc'  Si  le  sujet  pense 
bien  :  '  Je  ne  peux  pas,'  non  seulement  il 
ne  peut  pas  desserrer  les  doigts,  mais 
encore  ces  derniers  se  serrent  avec  d'autant 
plus  de  force  qu'il  fait  plus  d'efforts  pour  les 
separer.  II  obtient  en  somme  le  resultat  con- 
traire  a  celui  qu'il  voudrait  obtenir.  Au  bout 
de  quelques  secondes,  lui  dire  :  '  Maintenant, 
pensez  :  Je  peux,'  et  ses  doigts  se  desserrent. 

"  Avoir  toujours  soin  de  tenir  le  regard  fixe 
sur  la  racine  du  nez  du  sujet  et  ne  pas  per- 
mettre  a  ce  dernier  de  detourner  un  seul 
instant  ses  yeux  de  votres." 

Four  lines  farther  down,  Cou^  writes  of 


120     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

this  experiment,  "  Employez  toujours  un 
ton  de  commandement  qui  ne  soufFre  pas 
de  desobeissance."  [La  Mattrise  de  Sot- 
Meme,  p.  1 6.) 

This  is  an  extremely  neat  experiment  to 
illustrate  dissociation,  and  the  final  instruc- 
tions about  *'  fixing  the  regard  "  and  "  using 
a  tone  of  command  "  ensures  that  its  relation 
to  hypnotism  shall  not  escape  our  notice. 

Another  Method  of  Treatment  by 
Suggestion  and  Auto-suggestion 

But  the  best  method  of  employing  sug- 
gestion and  auto-suggestion  would  be  one 
that  avoided  artificial  dissociation  altogether. 
This  may  be  carried  out  by  asking  the  patient 
to  lie  on  a  couch  with  eyes  closed  and  all 
voluntary  muscles,  as  far  as  possible,  relaxed 
and  to  think  passively  of  sleep.  The  patient 
must  avoid  all  effort,  and  if  thoughts  thrust 
themselves  on  his  notice  he  should  quietly 
turn  his  attention  away  from  them  and  let 
them,  one  by  one,  pass  by.  He  is  to  allow 
his  mind  to  dwell  upon  the  idea  of  sleep 
throughout  the  whole  time  that  he  lies  on  the 
couch,  and  to  pay  no  attention  to  the  words 


THE    PRACTICE    OF    SUGGESTION        121 

that  the  doctor  will  address  to  him  later  on. 
Although  he  will  no  doubt  hear  these  words 
he  is  not  to  listen  (actively)  to  them.  For  the 
first  few  moments  the  doctor  suggests  relaxa- 
tion, passivity,  and  sleep  in  calm  tones,  and 
then  proceeds  to  give  his  suggestions  in  a 
low  voice,  speaking  with  calm  certainty. 
The  suggestions  are  both  special  suggestions 
in  reference  to  the  actual  symptoms  and  to 
their  causes,  so  far  as  they  may  have  become 
known  through  previous  mental  analysis, 
and  also  general  suggestions  of  sound  mental 
and  physical  health.  The  further  suggestion 
is  also  given  that  the  patient  will  be  able  to 
help  himself  by  auto-suggestion,  which  he 
will  practise  the  last  thing  at  night  and  the 
first  thing  in  the  morning  until  recovery  is 
complete.  The  patient  is  allowxd  to  lie 
on  the  couch,  thinking  of  sleep,  for  an  hour 
at  a  time,^  and  the  suggestions  are  given  him 
every  five  or  ten  minutes.  It  has  been  pre- 
viously explained  to  him  that,  although  he 
is  not  listening  to  the  suggestions  with  his 
conscious  mind,  yet  his  subconscious  mind 
will  receive  them  and  act  upon  them.     It  is 

1  In  some  cases  half  an  hour  for  each  treatment  is  sufficient. 


122    SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

also  explained  to  him  that,  should  he  actually 
fall  asleep  during  the  hour,  it  will  be  normal 
sleep,  not  hypnotic  sleep,  and  that  the  sug- 
gestions will  be  received  all  the  same.  Al- 
most all  patients  are  able  to  be  passive  for  an 
hour  at  a  time  in  this  way,  and  experience 
no  restlessness  whatever  while  doing  so. 
They  often  express  surprise  at  this,  and  state 
that  they  could  never  do  this  by  themselves 
at  home.  The  rest  itself  appears  to  have 
a  specially  recuperative  effect — ^like  a  con- 
centrated rest-cure,  as  one  of  my  patients 
remarked  to  me.  After  a  few  hours  of  treat- 
ment most  patients  find  themselves  able  to 
carry  out  auto-suggestion  satisfactorily.  My 
advice  as  regards  auto-suggestion  is  that  the 
passive  state  should  not  be  prolonged  for  more 
than  about  a  minute  at  any  one  time,  for 
reasons  already  stated  (see  p.  i  lo). 

Permanent  improvement  may  be  obtained 
in  this  way,  especially  if  the  suggestion 
treatment  is  preceded  by  an  adequate  mental 
analysis.  Almost  all  patients  need  help  by 
suggestion  from  another  person  before  they 
can  obtain  much  success  through  auto- 
suggestion.     This   is   not  surprising,   since 


THE    PRACTICE    OF    SUGGESTION        123 

suggestibility  is  an  essentially  j-^r/^/ character- 
istic. It  is  only  secondarily  that  one  be- 
comes suggestible  to  oneself  as  to  an  alter 
ego. 

Relation  of  Suggestion  to  Mental 
Analysis 

Much  has  already  been  said,  directly  or 
by  implication,  as  regards  the  relation  of 
suggestion  to  mental  analysis,  in  Chapters  I 
and  III.  Dealing  with  the  problem  from  a 
more  general  point  of  view,  one  may  har- 
monize these  two  lines  of  thought  in  the 
following  way.  As  a  result  of  mental  conflict 
the  mind  is  weakened  ;  there  is  a  weakening 
of  mental  synthesis  with  the  resultant  ten- 
dency to  be  more  readily  overwhelmed  by 
emotion,  and  more  readily  carried  away  by 
certain  ideas  if  supported  by  certain  feelings. 
In  this  way  our  subconscious  becomes  more 
ready  to  accept  fortuitous  bad  suggestions 
coming  down  from  consciousness.  Thus  in 
the  etiology  (or  causation)  of  functional 
nerve  disease  one  finds  both  general  factors 
at  work,  viz.  mental  conflict  and  bad  auto- 
suggestion.    Similarly,  as  regards  cure,  one 


124     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

may  by  analysis  help  a  patient  to  see  the  rela- 
tionship between  the  systems  of  ideas  which 
have  been  in  conflict,  and  to  make  up  his 
mind  as  to  what  line  he  should  take  to  over- 
come the  physiological  and  psycho-physiolo- 
gical effects  of  repression.  But  one  may 
also  apply  counter-suggestion  to  overcome 
bad  habits  of  mind  and  body  arising  through 
bad  auto-suggestion  at  the  time  of  the 
original  mental  conflict. 

It  is  in  the  case  of  patients  suffering  from 
stammering,  drug  habits,  enuresis,  etc.,  in 
which  an  habitual  reaction  of  a  pathological 
nature  has  grown  up  in  the  course  of  time, 
that  suggestion  and  auto-suggestion  are 
most  obviously  needed  as  a  supplementation 
of  treatment  by  mental  analysis. 

Suggestion  treatment  is  also  of  value  in 
some  forms  of  organic  nerve  disease,  where  an 
added  '*  functional  "  element,  produced  by 
bad  auto-suggestions  and  by  the  derangement 
of  parts  of  the  nervous  system  other  than  those 
directly  affected  by  the  disease,  can  be  dimi- 
nished or  even  eliminated  by  well-directed 
counter-suggestion. 

It  may  be  beneficial  in  some  purely  physi- 


THE    PRACTICE    OF    SUGGESTION        125 

cal  diseases,  through  its  power  of  influencing 
blood-supply  by  way  of  the  vaso-motor 
nerves,  as  well  as  by  counteracting  previous 
bad  auto-suggestions  in  the  mind  of  the 
patient.  In  cases  of  a  certain  type  suffering 
from  high  blood-pressure,  it  seems  some- 
times to  have  the  power  of  lowering  the 
blood-pressure  or  slowing  the  rate  of  its 
further  rise. 

Psycho-therapy  and   Religion 

The  relation  between  mental  healing  and 
religion  is  a  very  close  one,  which  cannot  be 
passed  over  in  silence,  although  this  is  not 
the  place  to  attempt  any  discussion  of  so 
great  a  subject.  Suggestion  points  inevit- 
ably beyond  itself  towards  faith  as  its  ulti- 
mate goal.  In  like  manner  mental  analysis 
and  autognosis  lead  on  to  the  problem  of 
mental  synthesis,  in  which  a  general  philo- 
sophic and  religious  outlook  on  life  is 
inevitably  demanded  of  both  patient  and 
analyst.  The  patient  must  work  out  his  own 
salvation,  it  is  true,  but  he  will  turn  to  the 
analyst  for  help  and  is  justified  in  looking 
for  such  help.     Some  training  in  ethical  and 


126    SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

religious  philosophy  on  the  part  of  the 
analyst  is  a  well-nigh  indispensable  part  of 
his  intellectual  equipment  in  dealing  with 
certain  types  of  psycho-neurosis.  On  the 
other  hand,  no  form  of  spiritual  healing 
can  safely  dispense  with  medical  opinion, 
and  in  particular  with  the  specialized  know- 
ledge in  neurology  and  psychiatry,  which 
every  well-qualified  psycho-therapist  pos- 
sesses. 

For  further  information,  I  would  like  to  refer  my  readers 
to  an  excellent  article  on  "  The  Meaning  of  Spiritual  Healing," 
by  the  Rev.  Harold  Anson,  published  in  the  Guild  of  Health 
Quarterly,  vol.  iii.  No.  25,  pp.  4.75-81,  March  1922. 


CHAPTER   X 

THE   PHILOSOPHICAL   BACKGROUND  — 
BERGSON'S   METAPHYSICAL   SYSTEM 

Every  revolution  in  scientific  theory  syn- 
chronizes closely  with  the  development  of 
nev^  ideas,  and  even  new  systems,  within  the 
domain  of  philosophy.  Modern  doctrines 
in  Psychology  are  surely  destined  to  play 
their  part  in  moulding  philosophic  specula- 
tion in  the  near  future.  But  already  we  have 
to  our  hand  a  new — or  in  great  part  new — 
metaphysical  system,  the  work  of  a  modern 
philosopher  of  outstanding  genius,  which  is 
closely  akin  to  the  spirit  of  those  doctrines. 
Professor  Henri  Bergson's  philosophical 
views  are  deserving  of  the  closest  study  by 
all  psychologists  at  the  present  day,  and  my 
readers  will  probably  derive  more  help  from 
a  brief  exposition  and  criticism  of  his  views 
than  from  any  attempt  on  my  part  to  deal 
more  generally  with  the  metaphysical  prob- 

127 


128    SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

lems  of  psychology  in  the  small  space  at  my 
disposal. 

Of  the  writings  of  earlier  philosophers, 
those  of  Schopenhauer,  Fichte,  and  Ravaisson 
seem,  though  not  ostensibly,  to  have  had  the 
greatest  influence  in  turning  Bergson's  views 
in  the  direction  most  characteristic  of  them  ; 
but  too  much  emphasis  should  not  be  laid 
on  this  fact.  The  way  in  w^hich  Bergson 
develops  his  system  is  entirely  original  and 
peculiar  to  himself.  The  method  he  employs 
— the  method  of  intuition — is  entirely  new. 
Like  most  philosophers,  he  starts  out  from 
the  individual  consciousness.  Here  he  finds 
that  the  most  characteristic  quality  is  change, 
continuous  and  progressive.  No  two  mo- 
ments of  consciousness  are  ever  exactly 
alike.  So-called  ''  states  "  of  consciousness 
are  hypostatized  abstractions,  resulting  from 
the  use  of  language  to  describe  the  workings 
of  the  mind.  Consciousness  is  a  stream,  of 
which  the  successive  pulses  interpenetrate 
one  another  to  a  greater  or  less  degree.  We 
become  aware  of  this  interpenetration  or 
continuity  by  an  act  of  intuition  in  which  the 
mind  turns  back  upon  itself,  "  does  violence 


THE  PHILOSOPHICAL  BACKGROUND      129 

to  itself/'  and  in  a  fleeting  moment  transcends 
the  subject-object  distinction  by  being  one 
with  itself. 

Intuition  and  Intellect 

Within  the  individual  mind  itself  there  is, 
according  to  Bergson,  a  twofold  tendency  : 
one  towards  spirituality,  in  which  the  mutual 
interpenetration  of  mental  processes  would 
be  complete  ;  the  other  towards  materiality 
and  spatiality,  where  the  interpenetration  is 
at  a  minimum  and  the  states  are  really  states 
external,  or  almost  external,  to  one  another. 
Mind  is  predominantly  spiritual  in  an  act  of 
volition.  It  is  itself  moving  towards  spa- 
tiality and  materiality  in  moments  of  passive 
reverie.  In  the  former  case,  the  mind 
gathers  itself  together  in  its  entirety  and 
propels  itself  forward  into  the  future  in  a 
free  creative  act.  In  the  latter,  it  becomes 
materialized  in  the  form  of  extended  exter- 
nally-related images.  The  antithesis  is  one 
between  intensity  or  tension  on  the  one  hand, 
and  extensity  on  the  other.  Spirit  is  known 
by  intuition,  matter  is  known  by  intellect. 
In   most  cases  both  intuition  and   intellect 


130     SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

are  needed,  since  the  objects  known  are 
generally  partly  spiritual,  partly  material. 
In  fact,  complete  materiality  or  spatiality, 
in  which  there  would  be  mere  quality-less 
points  completely  external  to  one  another, 
absolutely  indifferent  to  one  another,  is  a 
limiting  case  never  reached  by  actual  matter. 
The  function  of  intellect  is  to  know  matter  ; 
it  has  developed  pari  passu  with  the  move- 
ment tow^ards  materiality  in  order  to  know 
this  movement,  but  for  unexplained  reasons 
it  has  shot  beyond  its  goal  and  passed  to  the 
limiting  stage  of  empty  space.  Geometry 
expresses  the  properties  of  empty  space,  and 
intellect  is  ''  ballasted  with  geometry."  The 
method  of  the  intellect  is  essentially  geo- 
metrical and  mathematical.  Its  attempted 
reduction  of  all  quality  to  quantity,  in  the 
natural  sciences,  is  the  logical  outcome  of 
its  nature  and  functions. 

Time  and  Free  Will 

The  psychical  "  states,"  classified  and 
described  by  the  empirical  psychologist, 
are  abstractions,  moments  of  the  flux  of 
consciousness  torn  from  their  context,  instan- 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  BACKGROUND     131 

taneous  snapshots  of  the  ever-changing  mental 
life.  These  states  are  then  employed  to 
reconstruct  consciousness  by  being  placed 
end-to-end,  one  after  another,  in  a  homo- 
geneous time  which  flows  at  a  perfectly 
uniform  rate  and  exerts  no  sort  of  influence 
whatever  upon  them.  Such  a  picture  may 
represent  tolerably  well  for  our  practical 
needs  time  that  has  elapsed.  It  is  entirely 
false  as  a  representation  of  time  and  conscious- 
ness in  the  process  of  elapsing.  The  psycho- 
logical present  is  not  a  mathematical  point, 
but  has  a  certain  breadth  in  which  the 
immediate  past,  the  immediate  future,  and 
the  experienced  transition  from  one  to  the 
other,  are  present  together.  This  "  specious 
present  "  gives  us  real  duration  or  real  time. 
It  is  a  continuous  process,  apprehended  as 
continuous  by  intuition.  It  is  to  be  care- 
fully distinguished  from  the  ''  elapsed  '' 
time  just  described.  Elapsed  time  is  a 
hybrid  concept  formed  by  the  union  of  the 
concept  of  succession  taken  from  the  actual 
experience  of  duration  and  the  concept 
of  distinctness  given  by  experience  of  space. 
It  is,  in  fact,  "  spatialized  time." 


132    SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

The  problem  of  the  freedom  of  the  will 
has  been  made  insoluble  by  a  confusion  of 
these  two  kinds  of  time.  Determinists  and 
libertarians  alike  replace  duration  or  real  time 
by  spatialized  time.  Both  loosen  the  soli- 
darity of  the  past  with  the  present  ;  both 
over-emphasize  the  distinction  of  the  motive 
and  the  man  himself,  the  will  and  the  deed. 
Conduct,  so  far  as  spiritual,  cannot  be  pre- 
dicted, because  it  involves  from  moment  to 
moment  real  creation.  The  knowledge  of 
conditions  necessary  for  any  such  prediction 
would  have  to  be  an  inside  knowledge,  an 
actual  living  of  a  man's  life,  and  this  living 
would  have  to  extend  to  the  moment  of 
consciousness  of  the  act  which  was  to  have 
been  predicted.  Freedom  of  the  will  is  a 
reality,  since  spirit  is  a  reality.  Indeed, 
freedom  is  spirit  and  spirit  is  freedom. 
Freedom  is  possible  through  memory,  and 
we  shall  see  presently  that  Bergson  identifies 
memory  with  spirit. 

Elan  Vital 

Turning  from  the  individual  consciousness 
to  cosmic  process  in  general,  we  find  the 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  BACKGROUND     133 

evolutionary  progress  of  the  world  most 
explicable  in  terms  of  an  original  elan  vital 
or  vital  impulse,  a  creative  principle  which 
has  deposited  matter  in  the  course  of  its 
progress  and  is  now  engaged  in  making  this 
matter  an  instrument  of  freedom  by  organ- 
izing it.  An  unexplained  interruption  or 
inversion  of  the  vital  impulse  at  an  unspecified 
moment  of  its  history  ^  originated  a  down- 
ward movement  towards  materiality  and 
necessity,  so  that  now  the  whole  universe, 
like  the  individual  mind,  is  a  struggle 
between  an  upward  expansive  movement 
towards  spirituality  and  freedom,  and  a 
downward  movement  towards  materiality 
and  a  uniform  diffusion  which  is  space. 

''  Let  us  imagine  a  vessel  full  of  steam  at  a 
high  pressure,  and  here  and  there  in  its  sides 
a  crack  through  which  the  steam  is  escaping 
in  a  jet.  The  steam  thrown  into  the  air  is 
nearly  all  condensed  into  little  drops  which 
fall  back,  and  this  condensation  and  this 
fall  represent  simply  the  loss  of  something, 

^  This  introduces  a  very  serious  difficulty  into  Bergson's 
system — a  difficulty  which  faces  all  those  philosophers  who 
beheve  in  the  ultimate  reality  of  time. 


134  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

an  interruption,  a  deficit.  But  a  small  part 
of  the  jet  of  steam  persists,  uncondensed,  for 
some  seconds  ;  it  is  making  an  effort  to  raise 
the  drops  which  are  falling  ;  it  succeeds  at 
most  in  retarding  their  fall.  So,  from  an 
immense  reservoir  of  life,  jets  must  be 
gushing  out  unceasingly,  of  which  each, 
falling  back,  is  a  world.  The  evolution  of 
living  species  within  this  world  represents 
what  persists  of  the  primitive  direction  of 
the  original  jet,  and  of  an  impulsion  which 
continues  itself  in  a  direction  the  inverse  of 
materiality.  But  let  us  not  carry  too  far 
this  comparison.  It  gives  us  but  a  feeble 
and  even  deceptive  image  of  reality,  for  the 
crack,  the  jet  of  steam,  the  forming  of  the 
drops,  are  determined  necessarily,  whereas 
the  creation  of  a  world  is  a  free  act,  and  the 
life  within  the  material  world  participates 
in  this  liberty.  Let  us  think  rather  of  an 
action  like  that  of  raising  the  arm  ;  then 
let  us  suppose  that  the  arm,  left  to  itself, 
falls  back,  and  yet  that  there  persists  in  it, 
striving  to  raise  it  up  again,  something  of 
the  will  that  animates  it.  In  this  image  of  a 
creative  action  which  unmakes  itselj^  we  have 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  BACKGROUND     135 

already  a  more  exact  representation  of  matter. 
In  vital  activity  we  see,  then,  that  which 
persists  of  the  direct  movement  in  the 
inverted  movement,  a  reality  which  is  making 
itself  in  a  reality  which  is  unmaking  itself  ^  ^ 
Variation,  struggle  for  existence,  and  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest  all  find  an  explanation  in 
terms  of  this  metaphysical  hypothesis.  The 
different  species  and  genera  and  orders  are 
the  outcome  of  the  struggle  of  the  vital 
impulse  to  overcome  matter  and  convert 
necessity  into  freedom.  Progress  along  cer- 
tain lines  of  evolution  has  been  more  success- 
ful than  along  others.  The  greatest  advance 
has  been  made  in  the  cases  of  the  Insects, 
headed  by  the  Hymenoptera,  and  the  Verte- 
brates, whose  highest  stage  is  Man.  These 
two  great  divisions  of  the  animal  kingdom 
are  diverging  and  complementary  lines  of 
evolution.  In  the  one,  instinct  has  developed 
at  the  expense  of  intelligence  ;  in  the  other, 
intelligence  has  developed  at  the  expense  of 
instinct.  Instinct  is  to  be  regarded  as  a 
form  of  knowledge,  and  is  identical  with 
intuition.     It    may   be   unconscious   know- 

^  Creative  Evolution^  pp.  260,  261,  Eng.  Tr, 


136  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

ledge,  and  is  indeed  a  knowledge  acted 
rather  than  felt.  Intelligence,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  knowledge  of  relations.  It  is 
cinematographical  in  nature,  that  is,  it 
breaks  up  the  stream  of  Becoming  into  a 
series  of  instantaneous  views,  which  it  then 
puts  in  the  place  of  reality  and  tries  to 
explain  in  terms  of  their  relations  to  one 
another.  This  form  of  apprehension  has 
been  developed  for  the  purpose  of  knowing 
matter,  mainly  if  not  entirely  with  a  view 
to  acting  upon  matter.  Its  ''  instantaneous 
views ''  are  things,  states,  and  concepts,  and 
its  characteristic  mode  of  procedure  is  to 
join  like  to  like,  because  it  is  only  through 
resemblances  that  the  mind  can  predict 
material  changes  and  practically  interfere 
in  their  production.  But,  really,  ''  there  are 
no  things,  there  are  only  actions."  The 
intellect  falsifies  its  data  in  order  to  get  a 
practical  knowledge  of  them,  and  needs  to 
be  supplemented  by  intuition.  Now  intui- 
tion, which  is  instinct,  is  not  entirely  absent 
in  man.  The  compact  and  luminous  nucleus 
of  intellect  is  surrounded  by  a  vague  fringe 
of    intuition,    and    philosophic    as    distinct 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  BACKGROUND     137 

from  scientific  thought  consists  in  the  use  of 
this  intuition  to  revivify  knov^ledge  and  to 
put  meaning  into  the  laws  and  other  pro- 
ducts of  intellectual  activity.  The  value  of 
the  great  philosophies  of  the  past  resides  in 
their  intuition.  The  play  of  dialectic, 
though  useful  and  even  necessary  to  test  this 
intuition,  is  of  subordinate  value  and  im- 
portance. The  one  and  only  '*  method  " 
of  philosophy  is  the  method  of  intuition. 
The  philosopher  is  he  who  starts  life  with 
a  special  endowment  of  this  faculty  of 
insight  and  develops  it  still  further  by  prac- 
tice and  attention  to  the  facts  of  inner  and 
outer  experience.  Intuition  comes  to  one 
but  seldom,  and  then  only  in  brief  flashes. 
The  '*  practical  "  man  ignores  it  even  when 
it  does  come,  and  can  find  no  use  for  it  in 
his  intellectual  constructions  and  beliefs. 


Creative  Evolution 

Mechanism  and  teleology  are  alike  inca- 
pable of  explaining  the  world-process.  Both, 
alike,  ignore  the  fact  of  continuous  creation, 
and  assume   that  "  all   is   given.''     This   is 


138  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

obvious  in  the  case  of  mechanism,  and  a 
moment's  thought  will  show  that  teleology- 
is  open  to  the  same  objection.  According 
to  teleology,  the  universe  or  the  individual, 
or  both,  are  in  process  of  fulfilling  a  plan  ; 
but,  although  the  fulfilment  is  projected  into 
the  future,  it  exists,  as  a  plan,  now.  The 
truth  is  that  this  distinction  of  form  and 
matter  is  merely  a  distinction  relative  to 
our  needs,  a  distinction  made  for  this  reason 
by  our  intellect.  But  knowledge  is  wider 
than  intellect,  just  as  reality  is  wider  than 
matter.  From  the  point  of  view  of  know- 
ledge, there  is  an  impassable  gulf  fixed 
between  organized  and  unorganized  matter. 
Intellect  is  capable  of  knowing  the  latter, 
being  indeed  in  a  sense  identical  with  it 
and  having  a  parallel  evolutionary  history. 
Not  so,  however,  in  the  case  of  the  former. 
The  biological  and  psychological  sciences 
make  use  of  intellectual  concepts,  it  is  true, 
but  they  need  the  addition  of  intuition 
to  grapple  with  the  characteristics  of  reality 
which  form  the  essence  of  their  subject- 
matter. 

The   legitimacy   of  assuming    a    general 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  BACKGROUND     i 


39 


vital  impulse  in  the  explanation  of  organic 
evolution  is  vindicated  by  its  success.  Ran- 
dom variations,  be  they  continuous  or  dis- 
crete, finite  or  infinitesimal,  will  never 
explain  how  a  complicated  organ,  such  as 
the  vertebrate  eye,  has  become  evolved. 
The  eye  is  of  such  a  delicate  construction 
that  variations  of  different  kinds  in  different 
parts  of  it  must  be  most  accurately  adjusted 
one  to  another,  if  they  are  not  to  interfere 
with  the  function  of  vision.  The  odds 
against  this  correlation  happening  by  chance 
are  too  enormous  to  contemplate.  Nor  can 
individual  variations  be  imagined  as  waiting 
for  their  complementary  variations  and  being 
preserved  in  the  meantime,  since  this  is 
contrary  to  the  Darwinian  principle  that 
useless  variations  are  not  preserved.  The 
Lamarckian  view  of  the  inheritability  of 
acquired  characters  does  not  help  us  here, 
apart  from  the  great  difficulty  which  biolo- 
gists find  in  accepting  it  at  all.  But  the 
complete  inadequacy  of  the  ordinary  con- 
cepts of  biological  science  becomes  apparent 
when  we  find,  as  we  do,  similar  structures 
appearing  on  divergent  lines  of  evolution. 


140  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

The  eye  of  a  certain  mollusc,  the  Pecten,^ 
exhibits  remarkably  close  analogies  with  the 
vertebrate  eye.  Yet,  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  its  evolution  must  have  occurred  after 
the  divergence  of  the  mollusc  and  vertebrate 
lines  took  place.  The  only  mechanical 
explanation  which  can  be  suggested  is  that 
of  Eimer,  which  would  account  for  the 
similarity  of  structure  by  the  identity  of  an 
external  influence — in  this  case,  light — to 
which  the  organs  have  been  exposed.  The 
two  organs  have  been  evolved  in  adaptation 
to  a  common  influence.  But  adaptation 
may  be  either  passive  or  active.  It  is  passive 
adaptation  alone  which  would  be  able  to 
explain  such  a  similarity  of  evolution  as  we 
have  before  us.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  adaptation  of  the  eye  to  light  does  indeed 
start  by  being  passive — the  light  causes 
the  original  pigment  spot — but  this  form  of 
adaptation  quickly  gives  place  to  an  active 
adaptation  in  which  the  organ  and  the 
organism  make  use  of  light  for  their  own 

1  Bergson's  use  of  this  illustration  has  been  criticized  by 
biologists,  on  the  point  of  fact.  But  the  criticism,  although 
justified,  does  not  destroy  the  main  argument. 


THE   PHILOSOPHICAL  BACKGROUND     141 

ends,  and  active  adaptation  no  longer  fits 
in  with  Eimer's  theory.  Consequently,  we 
are  driven  back  to  the  view  of  an  original 
impulse  pushing  forward  in  different  direc- 
tions. The  similarity  of  the  eyes  of  the 
mollusc  and  the  vertebrate  is  a  consequence  of 
the  identity  of  impulse  underlying  their 
evolution.  The  materiality  of  an  organ  or 
organism  *'  does  not  represent  a  sum  of 
means  employed  [as  in  the  case  of  an  artifi- 
cially constructed  machine],  but  a  sum  of 
obstacles  avoided  ;  it  is  a  negative  rather 
than  a  positive  reality.  .  .  .  The  vision  of 
a  living  being  is  an  elective  vision,  limited  to 
objects  on  which  the  being  can  act  ;  it  is  a 
vision  that  is  canalized^  and  the  visual  appara- 
tus simply  symbolizes  the  work  of  canalizing. 
Therefore  the  creation  of  the  visual  apparatus 
is  no  more  explained  by  the  assembling  of  its 
anatomic  elements  than  the  digging  of  a 
canal  could  be  explained  by  the  heaping- 
up  of  the  earth  which  might  have  formed  its 
banks.  A  mechanistic  theory  would  main- 
tain that  the  earth  had  been  brought  cart- 
load by  cart-load  ;  finalism  would  add  that 
it  had  not  been  dumped  down  at  random,  that 


142  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

the  carters  had  followed  a  plan.  But  both 
theories  would  be  mistaken,  for  the  canal  has 
been  made  in  another  way."  ^ 

The  unity  of  the  function  is  the  essential, 
the  complexity  of  the  structure  is  the  rela- 
tive view  taken  of  it  by  the  intellect  ; 
although  the  mutual  adjustment  of  parts  is 
here  again  the  expression  of  the  singleness 
of  function,  and  the  necessary  outcome  of  it. 

^  Creative  Evolution^  p.  99. 


CHAPTER   XI 

BERGSON'S     THEORY      OF    THE 
RELATION   OF   MIND   TO  BRAIN  ^ 

The  general  statement  of  Bergson's  meta- 
physical position  in  the  preceding  chapter 
indicates  his  view  as  to  the  relation  of  spirit 
to  matter,  but  a  more  detailed  account  is 
needed  of  the  relation  of  the  individual  mind 
to  the  body  with  which  it  is  found  associated, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  objects  of  its 
external  environment  which  it  knows  and 
acts  upon,  on  the  other.  This  is  given  in 
Matter  and  Memory ^\ht  most  psychological  of 
Bergson's  works.  Indeed,  it  may  almost  be 
looked  upon  as  a  textbook  of  General  Psycho- 
logy, written  from  an  original  standpoint, 
and  showing  due  regard  to  the  intimate 
relation  which  exists  between  psychological 
analysis  and  explanation  and   philosophical 

1  For  a  full  discussion  of  the  various  theories  of  the  relation  of 
Mind  to  Brain  see  Psychology  and  Psych o- the rafy,  pp.  168-91. 

143 


144  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

first  principles,  and  there  is  little  doubt 
that  it  will  exercise  a  considerable  influ- 
ence upon  the  nature  of  future  textbooks 
on  the  subject.  Bergson  admits  that  he  is 
a  dualist,  but  claims  that  his  view  is  neither 
realistic  nor  idealistic. 

*'  Matter,  in  our  view,  is  an  aggregate  of 
'  images.'  And  by  *  image  '  we  mean  a 
certain  existence  which  is  more  than  that 
which  the  idealist  calls  a  representation^  but 
less  than  that  which  the  realist  calls  a  thing — 
an  existence  placed  half-way  between  the 
'  thing  '  and  the  '  representation.'  This  con- 
ception of  matter  is  simply  that  of  common 
sense.  .  .  .  For  common  sense,  the  object 
exists  in  itself,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
object  is,  in  itself,  pictorial,  as  we  perceive  it : 
image  it  is,  but  a  self-existing  image."  ^ 

The  individual  body,  its  brain,  and  even 
its  cerebral  cortex,  are  images  among,  or  by 
the  side  of,  the  other  images  which  go  to 
make  up  the  universe.  Realism  and  ideal- 
ism stand  alike  condemned  because  they 
alike  regard  the  individual  brain,  or  a  special 
portion  of  it,  as  the  source,  in  one  way  or 

^  Matter  and  Memory^  Introduction,  pp.  vii,  viii,  Eng.  Tr. 


THE   RELATION  OF  MIND  TO  BRAIN    145 

another,  of  our  representation  of  the  entire 
universe.  They  make  the  psycho-physical 
problem  absolutely  insoluble.  Most  psycho- 
logists are  now  willing  to  admit  that  this  is 
the  case  with  the  realistic  theory  known  as 
epiphenomenalism  ;  but  the  more  popular 
theory  of  parallelism  involves  difficulties  of 
the  same  philosophical  order.  That  material 
changes  in  particular  parts  of  the  individual 
cerebral  cortex,  themselves  parts  of  the  whole 
material  universe,  should  run  parallel  with, 
or  be  *'  the  other  side  ''  of,  consciousness  of 
the  entire  universe,  is  an  inconceivability 
if  anything  is  inconceivable.  The  view  is 
a  philosophic  generalization  based  on  an 
incorrect  interpretation  of  the  facts  of  cere- 
bral localization,  which  is  in  its  turn  deter- 
mined by  an  incorrect  estimate  of  the  mean- 
ing and  function  oi  perception. 

Perception 

Perception  is  a  form  of  action  rather  than 
a  form  of  cognition.  Its  importance  is 
practical  rather  than  speculative.  Its  dis- 
tinction from  memory  is  therefore  a  distinc- 
tion of  kind  and  not  merely  one  of  degree. 
10 


146      SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

Whereas  memory  has  to  do  with  the  past, 
the  interest  in  which  is  speculative  only,  per- 
ception involves  an  actual  presence  of  exter- 
nal objects  to  the  sense-organs,  and  is,  in 
fact,  the  reflexion  of  the  body's  virtual  or 
possible  action  upon  these  objects,  or  of  the 
objects'  possible  action  upon  the  body.  An 
unbiassed  consideration  of  the  structure  and 
mode  of  working  of  the  entire  nervous 
system  reveals  this,  although  the  truth  is 
obscured  for  the  psychologist  by  the  admix- 
ture of  affection  and  memory  as  factors  in 
actual  developed  perception.  The  nervous 
system  consists  exclusively  of  nerve-fibres, 
each  supplied  with  a  nerve-cell,  which  run 
from  the  periphery  (afferent)  to  the  peri- 
phery (efferent)  through  more  central  junc-  J 
tions.  These  central  junctions  are  in  every 
case  points  of  reflexion  and  redistribution  of  , 
the  nervous  impulses.  All  agree  that  this  is  I 
the  case  with  the  spinal  and  other  subcortical 
centres  of  the  nervous  system.  Anatomacal 
evidence  supports  a  similar  view  with  regard 
to  the  functioning  of  the  cortical  centres. 
Here  the  incoming  impulses  find  a  large 
number  of  alternative  paths  open  to  them. 


THE   RELATION   OF  MIND  TO   BRAIN    147 

The  brain  is  so  constructed  that  a  number  of 
incoming  impulses  can  converge  to  bring 
about  a  single  unit  reaction,  or,  again,  so  that 
a  single  incoming  impulse  can  dissipate 
itself  along  a  multitude  of  efferent  paths  and 
so  become  sublimated  ^  without  producing 
any  overt  reaction.  The  brain,  or  rather  the 
cerebral  cortex,  is  thus  a  sort  of  telephone- 
exchange  and  represents  a  certain  amount  of 
indetermtnation  in  the  reactions.  It  is  this 
indetermination  which  is  the  source  of 
conscious  perception.  Mechanical  reflex 
action  is  necessarily  determined  action  and 
is  therefore  unconscious.  Perception  is  like- 
wise action,  a  reaction  to  a  present  stimulus, 
but  it  is  not  necessarily  determined  ;  its 
consciousness  is  a  measure  of  its  indetermina- 
tion. 

In  the  above  account  we  have  described 
perception  in  its  essence,  as  it  is  in  theory 
rather  than  in  fact.  Bergson  calls  this 
''  pure  "  perception.  Ordinary  perception 
as  it  actually  occurs  differs  from  this  in 
containing  affection  or  "  sensation,"  and  the 

1  This  use  of  the  word  "  subUmation  "  is  different  from  that 
found  in  the  writings  of  Freud. 


148  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

contributions  of  memory.  The  body,  besides 
being  exposed  to  a  virtual  action  of  external 
objects,  is  subject  to  a  real  action.  It  is 
this  real  action  which  constitutes  affection.  | 
Affection  is  an  (ineffectual)  motor  tendency 
in  a  sensory  nerve.  It  forms  one  of  the  sub- 
jective elements  in  perception.  The  object  \ 
of  perception  is  perceived  where  it  is,  viz. 
outside  the  body  ;  the  affection  is  likewise 
experienced  where  it  is,  inside  the  body. 
Again,  perception  is,  in  fact,  not  absolutely 
instantaneous.  It  occupies  a  certain  breadth 
of  duration.  The  successive  moments  of  this 
duration  are  strung  together  and  condensed 
by  memory,  and  the  qualities  of  sensation  are 
due  to  such  condensations.  We  shall  return 
to  this  point  later.  Finally,  memories  from  j 
the  past  mingle  with  perception  of  the  present 
and  may  even  take  its  place.  ^ 

*'  For  if  they  have  survived  it,  it  is  with     | 
a  view  to  utility  ;    at  every  moment  they 
complete  our  present  experience,  enriching     j 
it  with  experience  already  acquired  ;  and,  as     ' 
the  latter  is  ever  increasing,  it  must  end  by 
covering  up  and  submerging  the  former.''  ^ 

^  Matter  and  Memory^  p.  70. 


THE   RELATION  OF  MIND  TO   BRAIN    149 


Pure  Memory  and   Rote  Memory 

''  Pure  '*  memory  has  no  physiological 
correlate.  There  are  no  "  centres  "  for 
memory.  The  brain  is  merely  a  motor 
organ.  Its  structure  is  completely  explicable 
in  terms  of  useful  reactions  to  environmental 
changes.  It  conditions  present  perception 
directly,  as  we  have  seen,  but  is  related  to 
memory  only  indirectly,  viz.  through  the 
motor  reaction  in  perception.  Successive 
perceptions  as  they  occur  give  rise  to  memo- 
ries which  are  permanently  retained  in  all 
their  particularity,  but  in  an  unconscious 
form.  These  memories  really  make  up 
what  is  known  as  mind  or  spirit.  In  their 
pure  unconscious  form  they  are  unextended 
and  in  a  state  of  complete  interpenetration. 
On  the  occasion  of  a  later  perception  certain 
of  them  may  find  the  motor  reaction  or  motor 
tendency  congruent  with  themselves  and 
are  then  enabled  to  slip  into  the  perceptual 
process  and  identify  themselves  with  its 
motor  prolongation.  In  this  way  they  rise 
again    in    consciousness    as   mental    images. 


150  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

They  thus  become  partly  materialized,  as  it 
were,  and  for  the  time  being  are  no  longer 
pure  memories. 

One  of  Bergson's  most  valuable  contribu- 
tions to  scientific  psychology  is  his  dis- 
tinction of  pure  memory  from  rote  memory, 
which  he  identifies  with  habit.  In  learning 
a  lesson  by  heart,  we  build  up  a  motor 
mechanism  having  all  the  marks  of  a 
habit. 

"  Like  a  habit,  it  is  acquired  by  the  repe- 
tition of  the  same  effort.  Like  a  habit,  it 
demands  first  a  decomposition  and  then  a 
recomposition  of  the  whole  action.  Lastly, 
like  every  habitual  bodily  exercise,  it  is 
stored  up  in  a  mechanism  which  is  set  in 
motion  as  a  whole  by  an  initial  impulse,  in 
a  closed  system  of  autom.atic  movements 
which  succeed  each  other  in  the  same  order 
and,  together,  take  the  same  length  of  time. 
The  memory  of  each  several  reading,  on  the 
contrary,  the  second  or  the  third  for  instance, 
has  none  of  the  marks  of  a  habit.  Its  image 
was  necessarily  imprinted  at  once  on  the 
memory,  since  the  other  readings  form,  by 
their    verv    definition,    other    recollections. 


THE   RELATION  OF  MIND  TO  BRAIN    151 


It  is  like  an  event  in  my  life  ;  its  essence  is  to 
bear  a  date,  and  consequently  to  be  unable 
to  occur  again.''  ^ 

This  distinction  is  similar  to  that  drawn  by 
some  psychologists  between  '*  personal  "  and 
'*  impersonal  "  memories.  It  is  absolutely 
essential  for  Bergson's  theory  of  memory. 
Corresponding  to  it  he  finds  two  distinct 
kinds  of  recognition,  one  entirely  mechanical 
based  on  the  working  of  pre-formed  motor 
mechanisms,  the  other  starting  from  memo- 
ries, among  which  the  mind  places  itself  by 
an  act  sui  generis^  at  a  bound,  and  working 
back  to  the  perceptual  and  motor  plane  of 
the  present.  Cases  of  ''  mental  blindness," 
or  loss  of  the  power  of  recognition,  whether 
visual  or  auditory,  are  not  due  to  a  real  loss 
of  corresponding  memories,  but  to  injury 
or  obstruction  of  the  motor  mechanisms 
which  give  these  memories  the  opportunity 
of  becoming  realized  as  supplementary  parts 
of  an  actual  perception.  The  facts  of  psycho- 
pathology,  especially  those  of  aphasia  in  all 
its  forms,  decidedly  support  this  view.  No 
memories  are  ever  really  lost.     We  carry  our 

1  Matter  and  Memory^  pp.  89,  90, 


152  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

entire  past  along  with  us,^  but  disturbance  of 
particular  motor  mechanisms  in  the  brain 
may  make  the  recall  of  some  portion  of  this 
past  either  temporarily  or  permanently  im- 
possible. It  is  our  entire  past  that  acts  at 
every  moment  of  conscious  experience,  but 
this  past  is  present  at  different  degrees  of 
tension^  as  it  were,  on  different  occasions. 
Bergson  represents  it  by  a  cone  standing  upon 
its  apex  on  a  plane.  The  plane  represents 
the  actual  material  world,  w^hich  exists  in  a 
continuous  present,  the  apex  of  the  cone 
corresponds  to  present  perception,  the  base 
to  the  manifold  of  our  memories,  each  with 
a  date  of  its  own  and  distinct  from  every 
other.  The  memories  are  all  represented  in 
different  horizontal  sections  of  the  cone,  but 
wdth  a  distinctness  and  at  a  tension  varying 
wdth  the  area  of  the  section.  The  nearer  to 
the  apex  the  section  is  taken,  the  greater  the 
degree  of  coalescence  and  tension  of  the 
memories,  the  more  impersonal  and  the  more 
subordinated  to  action  they  are.  The  infi- 
nite   number    of    sections    which    may    be 

1  See  Psychology  and  Psycho-therapy,  especially  chap,  vii  and  x, 
for  evidence  from  hypnotic  experiments  in  support  of  this  view. 


THE   RELATION   OF  MIND  TO   BRAIN    153 

imagined  correspond  to  an  infinity  of  dif- 
ferent planes  of  memory  from  which  the  past 
may  be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  present. 
Mental  activity  is  represented  in  the  figure 
by  movements  up  and  down  between  the 
apex  and  the  base.  It  corresponds  to  expan- 
sions and  contractions  of  memory,  having  as 
object  the  discovery  of  just  those  memories 
which  may  best  fit  into  the  motor  diagram  of 
present  perception.  In  this  way  the  motor 
diagram  itself  may  undergo  extension,  with 
the  result  that  yet  other  memories  may  suc- 
ceed in  inserting  themselves  and  thus  come 
to  overlie  the  percept.  The  power  of  the 
mind  to  produce  contractions  and  expansions 
of  itself  in  reference  to  present  experience  is, 
it  seems,  according  to  Bergson,  a  power  sui 
generis  and  ultimate  ;  yet  he  nowhere  clearly 
distinguishes  it  from  the  sum  of  memories 
themselves.  Before  bringing  this  very  obvi- 
ous criticism  against  him,  however,  we  must 
remember  that  in  Matter  and  Memory  he 
definitely  limits  his  consideration  of  memory 
and  the  nature  of  the  mind  to  those  aspects 
w^hich  are  essential  to  his  main  problem — 
the  relation  of  mind  to  matter.     After  saying 


154  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

that  ''  with  memory  we  are  in  very  truth 
in  the  domain  of  spirit/'  he  goes  on  to  state 
that  "  it  was  not  our  task  to  explore  this 
domain.  Placed  at  the  confluence  of  mind 
and  matter,  desirous  chiefly  of  seeing  the  one 
flow  into  the  other,  we  had  only  to  retain, 
of  the  spontaneity  of  intellect,  its  place  of 
conjunction  with  bodily  mechanism."  ^ 

Similarly,  in  his  Time  and  Free-Will 
Bergson  does  not  undertake  to  give  us  a 
psychological  theory  of  free-will.  He  con- 
tents himself  with  merely  showing  that 
determinism  and  libertarianism  are  both 
impossible  views,  and  that  freedom  is  a 
psychological  fact.  Perhaps  he  will  some 
day  give  us  a  book  on  the  relation  of  memory 
and  freedom  to  personality,  and  so  complete 
his  psychological  system.  If  so,  he  will  find 
plenty  of  material  to  his  hand  in  the  so-called 
New  Psychology. 

Matter  and  Mind 

The  ordinary  views  on  the  relation  of  mind 
to  matter  make  the  problem  an  insoluble  one 

'^Matter  and  Memory,  pp.  320,  321. 


THE   RELATION  OF  MIND  TO  BRAIN    155 

in  three  distinct  particulars.  They  make  the 
difference  of  matter  and  mind  a  contrast  of 
(i)  extension  and  intensity,  (2)  quantity  and 
quality,  (3)  necessity  and  freedom.  Taking 
these  distinctions  in  a  literal  and  extreme 
sense,  they  find  the  gulf  in  each  case  an 
impassable  one.  But  the  truth  is  that  exten- 
sity  is  a  characteristic  of  many,  if  not  all,  of 
the  sensory  contents  of  consciousness  ;  while, 
on  the  other  side,  matter  is  not  completely 
extended.  Space  does  not  exist  as  some- 
thing absolute  in  which  material  bodies  are 
located. 

*'  That  which  is  given,  that  which  is  real, 
is  something  intermediate  between  divided 
extension  and  pure  inextension.  It  is  what 
we  have  termed  the  extensive.  Extensity 
is  the  most  salient  quality  of  perception.  It 
is  in  consolidating  and  in  subdividing  it  by 
means  of  an  abstract  space,  stretched  by  us 
beneath  it  for  the  needs  of  action,  that  we 
constitute  the  composite  and  infinitely  divi- 
sible extension.  It  is,  on  the  other  hand,  in 
subtilizing  it,  in  making  it,  in  turn,  dissolve 
into  affective  sensations  and  evaporate  into 
a  counterfeit  of  pure  ideas,  that  we  obtain 


156  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

those  inextensive  sensations  with  which  we 
afterwards  vainly  endeavour  to  reconstitute 
images/'  ^ 

This  approximation  of  the  two  terms  in 
the  characteristic  of  extensity  helps  us  to 
overcome  the  opposition  between  quality 
and  quantity,  between  consciousness  and 
movement.  Although  corpuscles  (atoms, 
electrons)  are  at  least  as  much  figments  of  our 
imagination  as  the  discontinuous  and  dis- 
tinct external  objects  which  our  perception 
carves  out  in  the  continuous  physical  universe 
around  us,  yet  the  movements  which  these 
corpuscles  are  supposed  to  possess  as  attri- 
butes are  themselves  real.  They  show  dif- 
ferences of  rhythm  or  of  vibration-frequency. 
The  vibrations,  by  exhibiting  a  certain, 
though  minimal,  degree  of  interpenetration, 
constitute  a  real  concrete  duration.  The 
sensations  corresponding  to  them  are  in  a 
sense  identical  with  them,  only  in  a  con- 
densed condition — an  enormous  number  of 
them  being  summed  up  by  the  span  of 
memory  in  one  moment.  *'  Between  sen- 
sible qualities,  as  regarded  in  our  representa- 

^  Matter  and  Memory,  pp.  326,  327. 


THE   RELATION  OF  MIND  TO  BRAIN    157 


tion  of  them,  and  these  same  qualities  treated 
as  calculable  changes,  there  is  therefore  only 
a  difference  in  rhythm  of  duration,  a  dif- 
ference of  internal  tension."  ^ 

Finally,  mind  is  essentially  free  since  it  has 
its  roots  in  perception  which,  we  have  seen, 
is  a  measure  of  the  indetermination  of  re- 
sponse to  stimulation.  As  memory,  it  is 
free  in  a  yet  more  concrete  sense,  bringing 
the  past  to  bear  upon  the  present  decision, 
and  also  by  virtue  of  its  internal  tension 
contracting  an  indefinite  number  of  external 
moments  in  the  duration  of  the  present. 
Matter,  on  the  other  hand,  is  not  entirely 
bound  in  the  chains  of  necessity.  ''  Absolute 
necessity  would  be  represented  by  a  perfect 
equivalence  of  the  successive  moments  of 
duration,  each  to  each."  "  Still,  the  contin- 
gency of  nature  must  be  extremely  slight, 
and  in  Bergson's  view  even  complete  neces- 
sity in  matter  would  be  no  bar  to  the  inter- 
action of  mind  with  it.  Matter  is  annulled, 
neutralized,  or  latent  consciousness,  and  con- 
scious perception  is  only  related  to  it  as  the 

'^Matter  and  Memory^  p.  330. 
2  Ibid.,  p.  330. 


158  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 


part  to  the  whole.  So  freedom  needs  a 
basis  of  necessity  and  can  only  develop  in  close 
connexion  with  necessity.  The  structure  of 
the  individual  brain  with  its  innumerable 
alternative  pathways  for  the  transference 
and  discharge  of  nervous  energy,  making  it 
a  veritable  ''  reservoir  of  indetermination," 
is  something  more  than  a  mere  symbol  of 
this  relation.  It  represents  the  intimate 
organization  of  freedom  with  necessity  which 
is  the  essential  characteristic  of  life  and 
consciousness. 


CHAPTER   XII 
CRITICISM  OF  BERGSON 

Bergson's  system  of  psychology  stands  or 
falls  with  his  theory  of  ''  pure  perception." 
It  therefore  behoves  us  to  consider  this 
theory  still  more  closely,  and  to  see  what 
criticisms  may  be  brought  against  it. 

Perception,  in  Bergson's  view,  is  essen- 
tially "  discernment."  The  whole  universe 
consists  of  images,  of  which  our  body  is 
one,  acting  and  reacting  upon  one  another 
according  to  the  laws  of  physical  science. 
By  virtue  of  the  indetermination  implied  in 
the  structure  of  the  nervous  system,  the  body 
isolates  from  among  all  the  innumerable 
external  influences  streaming  through  it 
just  those  to  which  it  can  react  with  a  greater 
or  less  freedom  of  choice.  These  isolated 
influences  "  become  *  perception  '  by  their 
very  isolation."  The  relation  between  per- 
ception and  external  reality  is  thus  simply 

159 


i6o  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

that  of  part  to  whole  ;  "  there  is  in  matter 
something  more  than,  but  not  something 
different  from,  that  which  is  actually  given." ^ 
Bergson  denies  that  the  nervous  system  or  any 
part  of  it  can  add  anything,  in  the  way  of 
new  properties,  to  matter.  ''  The  nervous 
system,  a  material  mass  presenting  certain 
qualities  of  colour,  resistance,  cohesion,  etc., 
may  well  possess  unperceived  physical  pro- 
perties, but  physical  properties  only.  And 
hence  it  can  have  no  other  office  than  to 
receive,  inhibit,  or  transmit  movement."  ^ 
Consciousness  is  not  produced  by  interaction 
between  the  external  environment  and  the 
individual  brain.  It  already  exists  through- 
out the  universe,  though  in  an  annulled  or 
latent  form.  Each  point  potentially  per- 
ceives every  other  point  in  the  universe,  since 
influences  reach  it  from  all  these  other  points. 

Perception  and  Thought 

As  regards  the  space  problem  in  perception, 
Bergson   is   in   complete  harmony  with  the 

^  Matter  and.  Memory^  P-  7^- 
2  Ibid.,  p.  79. 


CRITICISM  OF  BERGSON  i6i 

views  of  modern  psychology  in  attributing 
extensity  to  sensations  and  in  distinguishing 
perceptual  from  conceptual  space.  Sensa- 
tions have  not  to  be  projected  outwards  in 
order  to  give  the  perception  of  an  image  or 
object  in  external  space,  for  how  should  we 
know  where  to  project  them  to  ?  Neverthe- 
less, an  immediate  perception  of  the  ex- 
ternality and  extent  of  an  image  and  an 
immediate  perception  of  its  exact  position 
and  size  are  two  very  different  things.  It  is 
only  with  the  former  that  we  start  ;  the  latter 
is  in  part  a  product  of  mental  activity,  and, 
as  such,  liable  to  error.  We  see  a  star  above 
the  horizon  when  it  is  really  below  the 
horizon.  The  refraction  of  the  light  rays, 
itself  unperceived,  has  made  us  see  the  star 
in  the  wrong  direction.  Perception  alone 
is  incapable  of  correcting  this  error. 
Thought  is  needed,  for  it  is  through  thought 
or  intellect  that  relations  are  conceived.  It 
is  questionable  whether  we  can  ever  with 
legitimacy  speak  of  perceiving  relations,  on 
the  Bergsonian  view  of  perception  which 
makes  it  identical  with  ''  discernment." 
Bergson  himself  regards  the  function  of 
II 


i62  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

intelligence  to  be  the  knowledge  of  relations. 
It  seems  to  me  that  such  knowledge  cannot 
be  lightly  brushed  aside  by  saying  that  its 
raison  d'etre  is  simply  utility.  It  is  genuine 
knowledge,  of  speculative  as  distinct  from, 
or  in  addition  to,  utilitarian  value,  and  a  kind 
of  knowledge  that  cannot,  on  any  hypothesis, 
be  given  by  perception.  Intellect  certainly 
enables  us  to  fill  in,  hypothetically,  gaps  in 
our  perceptions,  but  it  does  much  more  than 
this.  It  gives  us  a  deeper  insight  into  the 
meaning  of  perceptions,  and  furnishes  us 
with  the  real  freedom  of  deliberation  and 
choice,  not  that  aimless  freedom  of  sponta- 
neous activity  and  pure  duration  which  is 
all  that  Bergson  can  offer  us. 

The  time  and  space  relations  of  percep- 
tion which  interest  Bergson  himself  are,  as 
might  be  expected,  those  which  concern 
reaction  to  stimulation,  or  utility,  rather 
than  those  bound  up  with  the  difficulties  of 
speculation.  He  writes  of  an  animal  at 
the  perceptive  stage  of  consciousness :  ''  By 
sight,  by  hearing,  it  enters  into  relation 
with  an  ever  greater  number  of  things,  and 
is  subject  to  more  and  more  distant  influences;    j 


CRITICISM  OF   BERGSON  163 

and,  whether  these  objects  promise  an  ad- 
vantage or  threaten  a  danger,  both  promises 
and  threats  defer  the  date  of  their  fulfilment. 
The  degree  of  independence  of  which  a  living 
being  is  master,  or,  as  we  shall  say,  the 
zone  of  indetermination  which  surrounds  its 
activity,  allows,  then,  of  an  a  priori  estimate 
of  the  number  and  the  distance  of  the  things 
with  which  it  is  in  relation.  Whatever 
this  relation  may  be,  whatever  be  the  inner 
nature  of  perception,  we  can  affirm  that  its 
amplitude  gives  the  exact  measure  of  the 
indetermination  of  the  act  which  is  to  follow. 
So  that  we  can  formulate  this  law  :  Perception 
is  master  of  space  in  the  exact  measure  in  which 
action  is  master  of  time''  ^ 

The  Meaning  of  ^^  Image  " 

Bergson's  theory  of  pure  perception  only 
escapes  the  accusation  of  being  mechanical, 
even  mechanistic,  by  the  element  of  con- 
sciousness which  is  smuggled  in  by  way  of 
the  blessed  word,  "  image.''  If  the  Berg- 
sonian   reminds   us  that   the   emergence   of 

^  Matter  and  Memory^  P«  23. 


164  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

explicit  consciousness  is  explained  by  the 
''  zones  of  indetermination  "  which  indivi- 
duals possessed  of  a  set  of  cortical  centres 
enjoy,  we  may  reply  that  this  conception  of 
indetermination  is  either  altogether  vague 
or  else  refers  to  a  form  of  mechanism  which 
might  work  just  as  satisfactorily  without 
explicit  consciousness.  When  memory  is 
introduced  the  matter  assumes,  it  is  true,  a 
different  aspect,  but  even  here  intellectual 
activity  to  the  extent  of,  at  least,  comparison 
and  abstraction,  seems  also  to  require  to  be 
assumed  in  order  to  make  the  indetermina- 
tion a  genuinely  psychical  one. 

There  is  again  the  secondary  question  as  to 
w^hether  external ''  images"  are  to  be  regarded 
as  possessing  consciousness  or  as  l?eing  con- 
scious (potentially).  Bergson  writes :  "  That 
every  reality  has  a  kinship,  an  analogy,  in 
short  a  relation  with  consciousness — this  is 
what  we  concede  to  idealism  by  the  very 
fact  that  we  term  things  '  images.'  No 
philosophical  doctrine,  moreover,  provided 
that  it  is  consistent  with  itself,  can  escape 
from  this  conclusion.  But  if  we  could 
assemble  all  the  states  of  consciousness,  past. 


CRITICISM   OF   BERGSON  165 

present,  and  possible,  of  all  conscious  beings, 
we  should  still  have  only  gathered  a  very 
small  part  of  material  reality,  because  images 
outrun  perception  on  every  side."  ^  We 
may,  therefore,  assume  that  Bergson  con- 
siders that  images  are  consciousness  (annulled 
or  latent).  But  to  this  it  may  be  objected  that 
these  images,  when  they  are  brought  into 
explicit  consciousness  through  the  process 
of  perception,  fall  on  the  object  side  of  the 
subject-object  relation.  On  the  subjective 
side  we  have  the  elan  vital  itself,  in  an  indivi- 
dualized form  constituting  the  personality. 

Personality 

For  Psychology,  the  personality  is  an 
organization  or  system  of  instinctive  and 
other  conative  dispositions,  with  correspond- 
ing cognitive  dispositions.  It  comprises 
subsidiary  systems  which  correspond  to  the 
various  interests,  innate  and  acquired,  of 
the    individual.^     The   word   sentiment  has 

1  Matter  and  Memory^  p.  305. 

^j^Perhaps  the  most  complete  account  of  the  personality,  from 
the  purely  psychological  point  of  view,  is  to  be  found  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Prof.  W.  McDougall,  especially  in  his  Introduction  to 
Social  Psychology  and  Psychology. 


L 


i66  SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

been  employed,  first  by  A*  F.  Shand  and 
later  by  W.  McDougall,  to  denote  such 
subsidiary  systems.  A  sentiment  may  be 
defined  as  a  system  of  emotional  (instinctive) 
dispositions  centred  about  the  idea  of  some 
object.  Love  and  hate  of  persons  and  things 
fall  under  this  heading.  Morbid  systems, 
out  of  harmony  with  the  main  personality 
and  v^ith  life,  and  therefore  repressed,  are 
conveniently  distinguished  by  being  named 
complexes^  in  accordance  w^ith  C.  G.  Jung's 
first  use  of  this  term. 

But  the  essence  of  personality  can  never  be 
revealed  by  psychology  alone.  Truth,  beauty, 
goodness,  and  holiness  all  transcend  the  con- 
ditions of  space,  time,  and  causality,  within 
which  merely  psychological  explanations 
move.  To  understand  these  aspects  of  exis- 
tence we  still  need  to  employ  the  critical 
method  of  Kant.  The  general  question 
which  he  set  to  the  world  of  thought  in  178 1 
— *'  What  are  the  pre-suppositions  of  experi- 
ence ?  What  are  the  conditions  that  make 
experience  [as  a  connected  system]  possible  ?" 
— still  awaits  a  complete  answer.  Modern 
psychology  deepens  the  problem  through  its 


CRITICISM   OF   BERGSON  167 

more  profound  insight  into  the  complexity 
of  individual  experience.  In  recognizing 
the  existence  of  subconscious  motives  and 
subconscious  sources  of  power  and  inspira- 
tion, it  widens  the  scope  of  the  concepts 
of  freedom,  moral  responsibility,  and  in- 
tellectual and  esthetic  insight.  But  the 
ultimate  solution  can  come  only  from 
metaphysics. 


I 


CHAPTER  XIII 

CONCLUSION— THE   PRACTICE   OF 
PSYCHO-THERAPY 

In  an  elementary  book  it  is  not  easy  to  escape 
the  charge  of  dogmatism,  and  of  producing 
an  impression  of  finality  which  is  justified  in 
no  science  and  least  of  all  in  so  progressive 
a  science  as  that  of  psycho-pathology  and 
psycho-therapy.  It  is  therefore  well  to  state 
explicitly  that  none  of  the  views  expressed 
in  the  preceding  pages  are  to  be  regarded  as 
final.  Further  experience  is  certain  to  de- 
mand a  development  and  a  restatement  of 
them.  But  as  they  are  based  entirely  upon 
practical  experience  in  dealing  with  many 
thousands  of  cases  of  nervous  breakdown 
during  the  past  few  years,  including  five 
years  of  concentrated  experience  during 
the  war  as  a  psychological  specialist  treating 
war  cases  in  their  earliest  as  well  as  in  their 
later  stages  of  illness,  I  venture  to  hope  that 

i68 


THE  PRACTICE  OF  PSYCHO-THERAPY    169 

they  arc  not  entirely  wrong.  Had  space 
permitted,  I  should  have  liked  to  say  more 
upon  the  social  aspect  of  suggestion,  and 
to  have  linked  up  the  suggestion  of  the 
consulting  room  with  the  mass-suggestion 
of  the  crowd.  This  would  have  involved 
a  consideration  of  the  important  views  of 
McDougall,  Trotter  and  Rivers,  as  well  as 
Freud's  recent  important  book,  Massenpsy- 
chologie  und  Ich-Analyse,  But  such  views 
are  too  recent  and  too  debatable  for  any 
brief  discussion  in  an  elementary  volume. 
What  I  have  called  the  emotional  rapport 
between  physician  and  patient,  which  is 
an  essential  factor  in  treatment  both  by 
suggestion  and  by  mental  analysis,  is  in 
need  of  further  elucidation.  It  is  in  this 
direction  that  great  advance  may  be  looked 
for  in  the  near  future  in  the  general  theory 
of  suggestion. 

Factors  in  psycho-therapy  of  which  the 
value  can  be  regarded  as  definitely  assured 
are  :  psycho-catharsis  and  reassociation  of  the 
mind,  autognosis,  auto-suggestion,  and  the 
personal  influence  of  the  physician.  The 
last  of  these  is  on  a  different  footing  from 


170    SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

the  rest,  since  it  is  itself  in  need  of  further 
analysis  and  involves  the  problems  of  the 
future  to  which  I  have  already  referred. 
But  from  the  point  of  view  of  practice  it 
is  of  overwhelming  importance.  A  success- 
ful psycho-therapist  is  born  and  not  made. 
Theoretical  interest  in  psychology  and  scien- 
tific knowledge  of  the  subject  are  necessary,  ^: 
but  not  sufficient.  The  psycho-therapist  must 
be  able  to  think  himself  into  the  patient's  1 
situation  and  feel  with  the  patient.  He 
must  have  the  gift  of  true  sympathy.  This 
process  of  '*  going  along  wdth  "  the  patient 
and  seeing  the  world  from  the  patient's 
point  of  view,  while  also  retaining  his  own 
philosophy  of  life  which  from  a  wide  ex-  = 
perience  he  has  hammered  out  for  himself  f 
by  hard  thinking,  is  the  most  exhausting 
part  of  his  work,  but  also  the  most  indis- 
pensable. The  patient  should  be  able  to 
look  upon  him  as  a  friend  as  well  as  a  physi- 
cian. This  relationship  is  possible  without 
the  exaggerated  pathological  dependence 
of  the  hypnotic  subject,  and  is  compatible 
with  normal  independence  of  personality. 
The   psycho-therapist  must   also  possess  a 


THE  PRACTICE  OF  PSYCHO-THERAPY    171 

sound  knowledge  of  general  medicine,  and 
especially  of  neurology  and  psychiatry,  if 
he  is  to  be  a  thoroughly  reliable  help  to 
those  in  mental  difficulty.  There  are  psychi- 
cal symptoms  detectable  in  most  physical 
diseases,  and  in  the  case  of  some  organic 
nervous  diseases  they  may  be  so  pronounced 
that  the  physical  symptoms  may  be  over- 
looked. This  may  easily  happen  in  the 
early  stages  of  disseminated  sclerosis,  cere- 
bral tumour,  certain  vascular  disturbances 
of  the  brain,  etc.,  and  involve  the  loss  of 
precious  time.  '  Again,  some  forms  of  ner- 
vous breakdown  are  early  stages  of  dementia 
prsecox,  paranoia,  melancholia,  manic-de- 
pressive psychosis  or  other  forms  of  recog- 
nized insanity,  and  in  such  cases  a  sound 
knowledge  of  psychiatry  is  imperative,  if 
the  patient  is  to  receive  appropriate  treat- 
ment and  escape  disaster.  In  the  early 
stages  of  some  forms  of  insanity  psycho- 
therapy may  do  great  good,  but  a  knowledge 
of  possible  dangers  ahead  is  essential,  if 
only  that  one  may  guard  against  them. 

Finally,   disturbance   of  function   of  the 
glands     of    internal     secretion     (endocrine 


172    SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 

glands),  such  as  the  thyroid,  suprarenals,  sex 
glands,  etc.,  may  show  itself  almost  exclu- 
sively in  mental  symptoms.  In  such  cases 
appropriate  physical  treatment  (organo- 
therapy) as  well  as  psycho-therapy,  is 
needed.^ 

To  guard  against  these  pitfalls  it  is  im- 
perative that  the  psychotherapist  make  a 
thorough  physical  examination  of  his  pa- 
tient at  the  first  interview,  and  that  he  be 
on  the  look  out  for  possible  later  develop- 
ment of  neurological  or  psychiatrical  sym- 
ptoms in  the  course  of  the  mental  treatment. 
In  short,  the  psycho-therapist  must  be  a 
sound  physician.  We  have  already  seen 
that  he  must  be  a  sound  psychologist,  and 
not  lacking  in  a  training  in  philosophy. 

1  Suggestion  treatment  is  often  beneficial  in  cases  of  dis- 
turbed functioning  of  endocrine  glands,  probably  through  its 
effect  upon  the  sympathetic  nervous  system,  with  which 
these  glands  are  in  close  relation. 


pra>-~ED   IN   GREAT   BRITAIN   FOR   THE   UNTVERSITY  OF  LONDON  PRESS,    LTD.* 
BY   HAZELL,   WATSON  AND   VINEY,   LD.,  LONDON  AND   AYLESBURY. 


SUGGESTION  AND  MENTAL  ANALYSIS 


'BOOKS   FOR    FURTHER   RE  AIDING 
AdleRj  a.  :  The  Neurotic  Constitution 
Baudouin,  C.  :   Suggestion  and  Auto-suggestion 
Brown,  W.  :  Psychology  and  Psycho-therapy 
CouE,  E.  :  La  Maitrise  de  Soi-Meme 

Dejerine  and  Gauckler  :  Psycho-neuroses  and 
Psycho-therapy 

Freud,   S.  :    Introductory  Lectures  on  Psycho- 
analysis 

Hart,  B.  :  The  Psychology  of  Insanity 

Janet,  P.  :  Les  Medications  Psychologiques 

Jung,  C.  G.  :  Analytical  Psychology 

McDouGALL,  W. :   Introduction  to   Social  Psy- 
chology 

Prince,  Morton  :  The  Unconscious 

Rivers,  W.  H.  R.  :  Instinct  and  the  Unconscious 

There  are  ma7iy  other  equally  good  books  that  might 

be  mentio?ied.     The  above  list  is  given  as  illustraiing 

the  fnain  schools  of  thought  in  Psycho-therapy. 


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